Thanks to PartnerUp.com, I was introduced to a new Microsoft site (I love the serendipity and connections in our connected life) called TaskMarket.  It’s actually being run by MSR, Microsoft Research, in the Office Labs.

Here is a description for Janine Perret, program manager for the product. Please post comments about the concept, or post at the last link below (a blog from her team.) Would you use this? How can it be improved. As as the post says below, kick the tires – try  it out!

Welcome to the Task Economy.
Here at Office Labs, we’ve developed a site that may just help create a new economy of know-how.

It’s called Microsoft® Task Market, and it’s a new Tech Preview site that lets people with tasks to do find people with the know-how to do them – saving time, and improving the end product. We’d like you to be among the first to experience it, kick the tires, and share your opinions.
We think there’s a lot of potential here. Because for every person who throws up both hands at the prospect of creating a complex formula in Microsoft Excel, somewhere in the world there’s another person who can make it look easy. For every poor proofreader, there’s an expert one out there who wouldn’t mind making a few extra dollars. For every small business owner who doesn’t have time to do background research on a new business prospect, there’s a talented researcher who could quickly put together a dossier. Task Market aims to create a viable market to get them all together and things get done.

Task Market is in the Tech Preview stage. That means that we’re releasing the site “into the wild” to demonstrate the potential of the technology, investigate the breadth of user adoption, solicit ideas on how to improve the site and, ultimately, create a market of Task Posters and Task Solvers to help people get their office tasks done.

A Task Market Task is:

• Something that can be done for $20 to $500
• Something that the Task Poster could use help doing
• Something that can be delivered electronically, such as a Microsoft Office document (or design element like a logo or business card, or a short software task, proof reading, translation, etc.)

A Task Market Poster might need help with:
·     a specialized Excel formula
·     language translation
·     letter writing
·     an aspect of their accounting
·     making a PowerPoint presentation “pretty”
·     graphics, charts, formatting or logos
·     research gathering
·     proofreading
·     building sell sheets, listing sheets or simple brochures
·     fact checking

Task Market Solvers create profiles of their skills to help Posters assign tasks. They get email alerts when a job arrives that fits their skills. Posters can award and pay several solvers for tasks to compare results, and give more work to the ones they like.

We’re just getting started, but check out the working tech preview at www.taskmarket.com. Who knows. We may be building a whole new economy. We’d love to hear from you as the site populates and you try it out. Let me know if you have any questions.

A couple of reviews on this web site/application:

Microsoft launches Task Market for Office jocks – Rafe Needleman

Microsoft Task Market Project – Kick the tires and give us your feedback! – Eric Ligman, Microsoft