Microcontracted Life

During a moment of eye-wandering on the subway, noticed an ad for Agent Anything offering any errand, anytime, anywhere (in new york).  Despite the ad and useful matchmaking between busy people with $ and flexible college students without $, Agent Anything's current mission list is rather scant. Perhaps Craigslist already made that market simple enough. Or perhaps the site needs more personal profiles and ratings like the many services popping up to facilitate selling bits and pieces of one's life. From Fiverr marketing things you can do for 5 bucks, to Snapgoods renting your stuff, and Airbnb renting your home, will we soon be able to easily contract out every under-used piece of us? Similar to Kickstarter, Etsy, and Kiva, there is also a refreshingly human feel to some of these 1:1 life marketplaces.  Given its easy to overcook for one, a friend of mine is even building a service, "Kitchen Surfing", where people can find and share home-cooked meals and dinner tables.  E.g. I'm cooking fancy pasta in my east village apartment at 7pm and have room/extras for 2 more.

Comments

[Harry Schiff]

Hi, thanks for the post! I think you might've misread us though - there are few posts REMAINING on the site at any given time, because most Missions tend to get accepted or receive offers very quickly, so only the longer-term more complicated stuff stays there for very long, or else those from Clients who are holding out for better offers.

Also, I think if you took a quick look at the process of posting and accepting Missions on AgentAnything.com and the extent of the details provided to the Agent and Client about their responsibilities, you will see that we don't have all that much in common with Craigslist.

[Hsing]

Thanks for adding your perspective. Did catch the differences and commented partly because of those differences and relative degrees in which transaction costs are eased (e.g. from the gigs section of craigslist). Good luck with it!