One Degree: The Human Search Engine

I feel like this will have the same problem as zaarly (incredibly difficult to build such an open-ended reverse market place, the people who will be able to help on the ground have very little motivation to sign up, and the average user will most likely get very little return on their time investment). How could it avoid that pitfall ?

@_arnauds_ Interesting point. I wonder if simply creating lots of templates would help solve some of this? For example just like the Workflow app gallery listed today ( http://www.producthunt.com/l/2ab... )?

This feels most like Gigwalk to me. There are obviously lots of similarities to Zaarly, TaskRabbit, RedBeancon, HouseCall and others. Ad say Thumbtack is by far the best experience having tried all these services. Primarily because of the detailed questions they ask. The real insight here is that blank slates are too much friction. Yet conventional wisdom says remove steps that add friction. But adding friction commensurate to the value its adding is key with services like this. You have to assume most people who need the task done don't necessarily know the right things to tell the laborer completing the task. Plus more detail gives the laborer more incentive to apply for the task since they can better evaluate the task vs the compensation.

Connect with other people, wherever in the world you need someone on the ground, to collect information for you. This might be a photo or video request or some other type of search task such as visual verification, hyperlocal feedback, copying information from a book in a library or even a location based task.