Google's ImageLabeler is a cute game that exploits people's competitive nature - racing to tag an image with the same words as your online partner - for some spurious reward (to be on a score sheet) and results in improving Google's labelling of images. Very smart. In a similar vein,
LikeBetter lets you work to divine your true nature for the promise of them acting as an online horoscope reader. In return, they can probably extract tons of useful data about personality types.
Interesting. I matched a few but was distracted throughout wondering what and why. It is, as you say, a pretty obvious ploy. But this was a test not a product. GOOGLE know that systems which require human input (even if wrapped like this) do not scale. The trick is to utilize human intelligence more subtly to generate information, correct assumptions, or tune algorithms. With so much and so many now online these 'passive learning systems' quickly amass a vast amount of information unobtainable by survey or calculation. This is not new. We interact with many daily but they neither detain nor distract us. This is as it should be. I wonder how long it will be before anything that is not appears labeled clumsy and inarticulate.
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