Do-gooder iPhone app GiveWork gets more photo- and web-friendly

There’s a new version of GiveWork, the application that lets iPhone owners perform simple tasks to help refugees, with new features that should make those tasks a little more varied and interesting.
GiveWork was created by startups CrowdFlower and Samasource. Companies can hire Samasource’s refugee workforce using CrowdFlower’s crowdsourcing technology for menial tasks, such as identifying the sentiment expressed in different tweets. Then users of the GiveWork app help by performing some of the same tasks in the app. Their results are then used to check the results from Samasource workers, providing a layer of quality assurance.
I’ve been using the GiveWork app for a couple months, and the most common task has involved going through a list of words and identifying which one seems “happier,” which is an interesting psychological test, but which has also been getting a little a tedious. The new version of GiveWork opens up new opportunities. With the camera integration, I could do tasks that involve pictures, such as taking a photo to confirm that a business is open. With the web browser integration, I do tasks that require web searches or trying out a website. And with the new Facebook Connect integration, users can log in with their Facebook accounts, rather than creating a separate login in GiveWork to track their activity. You can download the app here.
CrowdFlower and Samasource said the app has routed work to 20,000 unique works, been downloaded in more than 76 countries, and brought an eight-fold increase to workers in Kenyan refugee camps. The companies haven’t just done good for their workers, either — they helped translate messages for relief efforts in Haiti.
Both companies are based in San Francisco. CrowdFlower has raised a total of $6.25 million. (Disclosure: The company’s chief executive, Lukas Biewald, is a friend of mine, and VentureBeat also shares an investor, Aydin Senkut.) Samsource is a nonprofit.