Too lazy to do your chores or errands? Willing to pay some cash to crowd source it? Meet TaskRabbit, a collaborative service that allows you to post up things you don’t really want to do, along with how much you’re willing to pay for them to get done, and then get a willing stranger to show up at your door to do them.
Previously, TaskRabbit was just a mobile site, but it’s recently released a slick new iPhone app.
The idea is simple. First, you choose the kind of task you want done from various task categories like Task posters can use the Lazy Susan-like interface to choose from task categories like Cleaning, Donations, Shopping, Food Delivery, Cleaning, Donations, Delivery and Something Else. The app then plucks your location from your iPhone’s GPS and suggests a price you might want to pay for the task based on historical data.
Once you’ve submitted your task, task runners, or Rabbits, are able to see nearby tasks using a “Browse tasks around you” feature. These Rabbits are vetted, so there are a minimum of toothless axe lunatics in the TaskRabbit chore-running ecosystem. If they see your task, and they like the price being offered, they’ll be put in touch.
It’s a pretty cool idea, but pick your tasks carefully! Since I was busy writing this post, I asked TaskRabbit to find someone willing to come on by, make my girlfriend a cup of tea and wake her up with a kiss on the forehead, as is customary in the Brownlee household. I can’t really fault TaskRabbit for what happened, but the Rabbit who eagerly popped on by a mere twenty minutes later and cheerily waived the $20 as he skipped joyfully into the bedroom could best, perhaps, be described as more eager and unctuous than he was fully clothed. To make a long story short, thirty minutes and several screams later, there’s a suspicious new task up on TaskRabbit’s site looking for a Rabbit willing to break up with a mystery woman’s long-time boyfriend whilst simultaneously breaking his face. So maybe stick with asking people to come on by and do the dishes.
[via TechCrunch]
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
18 responses to “This Amazing New iPhone App Will Help You Get Strangers To Do All Of Your Errands”
Loving the idea behind, but it scares me to think people are running errands for others and may drop things off at some unknown house.
Here we go again with craigslist killers
My buddy and I came up with a similar idea in college. We were too… lethargic to leave the couch, but we were both very, very hungry.
I just downloaded it and the thing sucks, you have to have a facebook account to log in.
Facebook absolutely blows. Terrible business model to have only one way to log in.
Creepiest app ever.
I like it, but … “donations” is a task? silly.
You can see why they need to have some kind of log-in that checks for “real” people though. If they had their own sign-in many hi-jinks would ensure for certain. I bet they will add Google Plus in the near future.
Imagine a hot girl dropping off your laundry and grocery. The world is still a dangerous place out their to the naive. I hope every stays safe and use your head!!! females especially.
all the people running tasks are completely background checked
The usual idea is that you would use NFC to set up the link between the two devices and then do an automatic hand over to a different protocol for doing the actual transfer of data – eg Bluetooth,iphone 5