Paid Crowdsourcing Via Mobile

What happens when you combine crowdsourcing with mobile phones and a ready money transfer/billing platform?

Following on from today's theme of micro-payments - Nathan Eagle's talk at eTech on crowdsourcing via mobile phone - touches on numerous examples of mobile innovation in East Africa, spanning give-away SIM cards, USSD and voice to text transcription.

What happens when it's easier to pay electronically in a taxi in Nairobi than in NYC or London? When your (mobile) identity can be given away (to would-be high-spending customers) for free? Some of you are old enough, bless, to remember surfing the web with dial-up - how did your usage pattern change when you switched to always-on broadband? What happens when you take the same shift in experience and apply it to text messaging? That open USSD session is no less powerful than an empty search box waiting for your next command. Sprinkle a couple of billion mobile phone into the mix.

Video link via Eric Herman.

Photos: from our field study in Cairo - the chained Nokia 5100's are the default mobile phone kiosk operators weapon of choice.