—The Pacific Standard
“Crowdwork represents a small but growing microclimate in the ecosystem known as platform economies. These are business activities burgeoning through the ties that bind the Internet, smartphone apps, and social networks. The boss here is not a mid-level manager but an application programming interface or API deployed on a platform. The platform—owned and operated by companies like Amazon, Upwork (formerly oDesk), and LeadGenius—works in concert with an API to generate and verify workers’ accounts, handle the workflow of millions of online job postings, and route payments to workers once they complete their tasks and submit them for approval from an invisible, ethereal “employer.”