With over 200 million Internet users in China, there’s bound to be someone who is willing to help you photoshop your pictures. At least that’s what Tucia, a new Chinese “witkey” website, is hoping. Users upload their photo, describe how they want their photo edited and provide a deadline. Aspiring designers, photoshoppers and students edit the photos and send back a final copy to the original photographer, all for free. Tucia follows the lead of other successful human-powered web services in China like Baidu’s popular Q&A site.
If you are looking for an online image processing service, here’s a lazy man’s choice. Just upload your image to Tucia as well as providing your requirement, there will be real human do it for you.
Tucia is yet another service ready to beat any algorithm with human power. The other similar area is human-powered search engine, which is now occupied by all kinds of Q&A services. Tucia’s tagline, only human can fully understand your requirement, sounds really compelling if you have been disappointed by image processing software, in other words, your own crappy skill.
Tucia’s idea is not new, as it’s very similar to witkey market. Now Tucia is not a real witkey service yet, because it doesn’t charge for service now. But the revenue model is waving not far away, as it’s served as a bridge between problems and solvers. And bridges are not difficult to monetize like in real life. They only have to attract enough photoshoppers and users without art cells. The right thing to do is to tweak the web site to make it smoother, which is exactly what they are doing.
