the guy who successfully sold data
recaptcha, duolingo, what's next? 👩💻
i was reading about captchas a lot today at work and realized that the guy who invented recaptcha, luis von ahn, basically built a data-selling company, except he somehow made it beneficial for everyone involved. he did this not just once, but twice, co-founding duolingo as well.
first came recaptcha. millions of people solved captchas to access websites, while simultaneously helping digitize books and improve ocr systems.
then came duolingo. millions of people showed up to learn languages and, in the process, generated valuable language data and translations.
most companies collect data as a side effect of providing a service. von ahn flipped the model by finding valuable human work that needed to be done and turning it into a service people wanted.
what’s funny is how consistent the idea has been. recaptcha turned security into useful labour, while duolingo turned education into useful labour. the products look completely different, but they’re both built on the same insight that if you align incentives correctly, people will happily create enormous amounts of valuable data while accomplishing their own goals.
so, the company gets data, and users get access, education, or a useful skill.
it’s still a data business at the end of the day. just one of the few where nobody seems mad about it. LOL.
today’s drops 🔎
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