Mobile Crowd Sourcing in the Developing World

Nathan Eaglenathan@mit.edu

Who Uses Mobile Phones?

Why Africa?

•Africa: fastest growing mobile phone market in the world

•Vibrant, growing community of computer science graduates

•Mobile airtime and money Transfers

•Truly innovative mobile applications and services

EPROM:Entrepreneurial Programming and Research

on Mobiles

•Education

•Research

•Entrepreneurship

• Mozambique, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Senegal, Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania, Rwanda, Nigeria

http://eprom.mit.edu

EPROM: EntrepreneurshipMobile Application Development

•SMS Gateway

•Air Time Regulator

•Stolen Car Alerts

•Business Directories

•Pre-Paid Electricity

•Weather Forecasts

•MoSoko (Craig’s List)

•Crush Lists...

EPROM: SMS BloodBank

•Real-time monitoring of blood supplies at local district hospitals in Eastern Kenya

Empowering the largest knowledge workforce on Earth.

Idle Times in Idle Times in Africa…Africa…

Kenya- English Speaking- >75% Literacy Rates- 12M mobile phone subscribers

Yet almost half the country is unemployed.

Crowd-SourcingCrowd-Sourcing

There are over 2 billion literate, mobile phone subscribers in the developing world, many living on less than $5 a day.

Corporations are inundated with small tasks that need to be done.

Cellular NetworksCellular Networks

How to increase ARPU?How to monetize underutilized capacity?

The OpportunityThe Opportunity

We can now enable these tasks to be distributed and completed via a mobile phone anywhere in the world.

Spring ‘09 Spring ‘09 DeploymentDeployment

The Dominican Republic

Kenya

Rwanda

Accuracy InferenceAccuracy Inference

Expertise InferenceExpertise Inference

Translation TasksTranslation Tasks

There are over 100 languages in Kenya alone; companies like Nokia would love to localize their software, but don’t know how.

Citizen JournalismCitizen Journalism

Compensate subscribers for reporting news as it happens.

Rural BankingRural Banking

Accumulate enough txteagle credit, and have a bank account opened in your name.

Village Phone Village Phone OperatorsOperators

Grameen VPOs have downtime too…

Multiple accounts can be set up for users of a single phone.

Surveys and Surveys and Market ResearchMarket Research

Significant amounts of money on surveys in the field; we can provided targeted questionnaires to specific regions of interest.

USSDUSSD

Sessions-based SMS!

No preconceived cost.Lots of experience.

Menu driven.

Beyond txtBeyond txt

The Voice Channel…

Targeted Radio Ads Speech Recognition

TrainingTranscription

Service Now Live in Service Now Live in KenyaKenya

Pilot Users:

Security GuardsTaxi Drivers

High-School Students

Translation Tasks Translation Tasks Completed.Completed.

Enormous Uptake – no advertising required.

> 15 languages completed

shortcode 3007

15 million Africans 15 million Africans are ready for work.are ready for work.

Got tasks?Got tasks?