One of the things that is hard to gauge in the brave new world of web services and new social business models is whether there is any substance behind the hype in a specific concept. The ugly downside of the 'silicon valley' hive is that a lot of VC/Entrepeneur/New Media back scratching goes on. Evidence CrowdCloud. CrowdCloud is billed as a tool for mobilizing large numbers of on line workers to rapidly complete tasks, paying them on a per event basis. I got interested in the concept so I signed up to be a CrowdCloud 'employee' and completed the editing of a test website to see whether I 'had what it takes' to edit badly written english websites for them.
They came back to me and said that I wasn't 'up to their standards' which perplexed me because creating content for the web is actually an area that I am known to be very good at. So I sent the original and my rewrite to a friend who is a professional editor for her opinion. Sure enough after reviewing the materials she agreed with me that what I had done was certainly professional quality.
That's when it hit me: this company has no customers. As a result, they have no need for new people. And rather than sign up a bunch of people who would get no work, signalling their lack of success, they chose to pretend that their standards were "too high".
Sometimes it's hard to figure out who is for real when you're out on the Openwater.
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