So, I have a story to share about Mechanical Turk that you might find interesting. I’ve shared it a couple of times before on Twitter and Bluesky, but I’ll share it again.

Long story short: Mechanical Turk saved my bacon.

Back in 2005, I was working a job at a small-town newspaper in a town I’d never lived before. I didn’t know anyone beyond the staff (as I was working layout rather than as a reporter), and I had gotten interested in the idea of doing Mechanical Turk for a few extra bucks. I thought there might be a formative scene of interested people doing this, so I started working on a blog for it. I briefly collaborated on it with another guy who put it on forum software because he didn’t know how to use, like Drupal.

That blog was called Turking.com, and it seemed like it was going well for a bit. We even got a mention on the AWS website. But after about two or three months, it was clear the initial excitement around the idea (and the initial work) had died down. (The work picked up later, but in clearly different ways. I don’t think folks were really “excited” about it after that point.)

If you want to get an idea of it, there was one capture on the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20051124231722/http://www.turkin...

The site had started to die out in part because my iBook suffered a catastrophic GPU failure and me, being a broke small-town newspaper employee, did not have the money to replace it. Plus, the community just hadn’t emerged like we had expected.

But then I got an email out of the blue: Someone wanted to buy my domain, which I owned outright, but they didn’t want to say who. I got contacted by a broker, and the exchange took place over escrow.

(The domain most assuredly was bought by Amazon and is managed by MarkMonitor.)

I didn’t get a ton of money from the deal, but I did get enough to pay for a new laptop. I had some regrets about selling it (in part because I originally built the site with someone else), but I was in a bit of a dire financial situation which that proved to be the starting point for getting myself out of.

That domain purchase was notably more than I ever made from clicking and classifying random pictures, that said.

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idiotsecant a day ago | parent | next [-]

So did the other person just get hosed when you did your 'ipo'?

	▲	shortformblog a day ago \| parent [-]
		I explained the situation after the fact, and they were understanding. But certainly I admit that if I could do it again I probably would have clued them in sooner. The site had slowed down by the point this happened, so I’d describe it as a little more of a fire sale. I learned a lot from that situation that I took to future sites.

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latexr a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> Long story short: Mechanical Turk saved my bacon.

Nothing wrong with your story, but that summary is terrible. You had a domain for a blog and someone bought it. That’s it. Mechanical Turk is inconsequential, as is the subject of the blog, the story would have been exactly the same if your blog had been about turkey sandwiches and Burger King offered to buy it.

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tigerlily a day ago | parent | next [-]

The guy sold the domain and was literally able to buy the laptop that got him out of his dire financial situation.

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shortformblog 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I see you missed the point of the story. But whatever. I'm sorry my dire financial situation didn't tie up in a nice enough bow for you.

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latexr 20 hours ago | parent [-]

I honestly don’t see what you don’t understand about “Nothing wrong with your story”. It’s literally the start of the first sentence. It seems pretty clear to me the mild criticism is directed solely at the summary (you know, the quoted part), not the story.

Ironic that you’re accusing someone else of “missing the point”, considering.

	▲	shortformblog 17 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The point of the story was that I built a thing about Mechanical Turk to promote its money-making capabilities, and ironically made more money from it indirectly than I ever did directly. Considering that point was implied by my framing, you did in fact miss it. I’m not saying that you have to like a story, but your framing felt unfair, which is why I responded that way.