Recently while doing an image search for pictures of french toast I noticed a link in the top corner that said New! Google Image Labeler. I thought this sounded interesting so I gave it a click.
I was surprised for two reasons:
- Google had apparently acquired this fun image labeling game I had once played 2 or 3 years ago.
- I had just mentioned this game to my brother 2 days ago when he was talking about a collective consciousness experiment. Talk about collective consciousness!
The game goes like this:
First you are paired up with an online partner who also wants to play. Next you are shown an image and asked to label it. There is a list of off-limits labels that you are not allowed to use. The goal here is to type the same label as your partner so that you can move on to the next image. In the process you end up typing many different labels per image in hopes of typing a match. You are also able to pass on hard to label images.
You have a 2 minute time limit and score points each time you and your partner match labels. The points earn you nothing but bragging rights, and perhaps a spot in the top scorers area.
At the end of the game you are able to see a list of the words your partner used to describe each of the images. It’s very interesting to see how differently someone can see the same image.
Every once in a while you’ll get paired with someone who amazingly seems to think the exact same way you do, and that’s when it really gets fun.
The brilliant thing about the Google Image Labeler is that Google has created a quite fun game, that is actually getting work done on the back end. You see, Google uses the matched labels as possible labels for those particular images in their image search. Thus they are actually creating a more accurate human labeled image search under the guise of a “game”.
To me this falls along the same line of genius as the self checkout lines at grocery stores. People complaining about checkers being too slow? Let’s let them do it themselves and at the same time, be able to hire less checkers. Win Win! (Lose for people wanting checker jobs)
I expect we’ll see more innovations like this in the coming years. Perhaps a “flip the burger” game at McDonalds or a “help Mr. Drain chug the old oil” game at Jiffy Lube. If these games are fun like the Google Image Labeler, you’ll soon be dry cleaning your own clothes without even realizing it!
What I really want to post here though is how cool I think 
for $79.99 or the 
