Your Job Done
= connecting people who want small jobs done with those willing to do them (in the UK)
Description
"YourJobDone is the modern equivalent of a concierge service, connecting people who want small jobs done with those willing to do them. It's currently only operating in London but the intention is to expand to other major UK cities in early 2012.
Typical jobs might be gardening, moving some furniture, washing a car or walking a dog, but anything is potentially possible. Posting a job is a simple matter of visiting the website (there's also an Android app in beta) and describing the work involved, a time, location and the maximum you're willing to pay.
nyone can register to do jobs, you specify what types of work you're interested in by ticking categories and subcategories from a list that ranges from plumbing to shopping. When a job comes in, YourJobDone automatically selects anything from five to 30 suitable candidates and texts them the basic details of the job. They reply to say how much they'd be willing to do it for, and after an allotted time window, the lowest bidder receives the full details, including the poster's phone number.
As its co-founder David Caldwell explains, "At the moment the amount of hassle you have to go through to find someone to do some kinds of work is greater than the value of the job itself." With YourJobDone, jobs and workers are matched geographically and by skill, and it all happens quickly, with the minimum of effort and for a price that works for both parties.
A key element to any peer-to-peer service is developing and maintaining trust between users. Large businesses have a vested interest in fostering a good reputation, but the reputation of YourJobDone depends on the honesty and goodwill of its users.
That might seem like a gamble, but eBay has shown that, with the right systems in place, online peer-to-peer communities are able to police themselves. eBay traders will go out of their way to provide each other with positive buying and selling experiences. Their motivation is often altruistic, but it must also have a lot to do with eBay's reputation system, where users are keen to receive positive feedback that will let them continue to trade on the site.
The same principles apply at YourJobDone, but the motivation for workers to receive positive feedback is even more explicit and direct. When jobs are put out to tender, the people they're offered to are filtered by skill and location but also by reputation. As such, it's in their interests to do jobs well in order to receive further offers of work.
Caldwell points out that, with traditional trade directories, "There's no reputation information, or if there is, it could have been put there by anyone. When a new user joins YourJobDone, their email address and mobile number is confirmed as part of the registration process. While it is possible for people [who have built up a bad reputation] to get a new phone number and email address and re-join, the chances are they'll see that as too much effort.
...
"Peer-to-peer marketplaces today are in a similar position to where retail banks were 80 years ago before they exchanged credit ratings with each other. You've got a big company like eBay, which has a massive amount of reputation information locked up in it. At the moment they would see that as their own high-value property, but as other businesses grow it will become in their interests to exchange their reputation information with other peer-to-peer companies. I believe that, within 10 years, exchange of an individual's reputation as a trader will become as commonplace as an exchanged credit score."
A DEAL THAT WORKS FOR EVERYONE
The benefits that peer-to-peer marketplaces bring to their users are clear, but few of these organisations are charities or government bodies. They too need to make something from the deal in order to survive and flourish.
YourJobDone launched a beta service in February 2011, and officially launched in July. The company's overheads are pretty low, but there are still the costs of sending text messages, office and server space, plus wages. We asked Caldwell how YourJobDone covers these expenses.
"We've been experimenting with a few different things. During the beta we tried a flat posting fee, which went down like a lead balloon. We went over to commissions, which is a pretty well-established way of collecting revenue. But at the moment we aren't collecting any fees at all, simply because we're pushing for adoption. There's some mental barrier between free and even a small charge until you get a certain level of adoption." (http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/general/1290001/peer-to-peer-living-save-money-by-cutting-out-the-middle-man/)