Mob4Hire pegged a perfect opportunity to call in a crowd.  Mobile application providers struggle to get their wares tested on all handsets, on all carriers, around the world.  Add in location-based services and it becomes pretty much impossible to create a test-environment. Now with almost 10,000 handsets on more than 288 operators in 102 countries worldwide, Mob4hire has become the leader in crowdsourced mobile application functional and usability testing, worthy of recognition among the Red Herring Top 100 technology companies for 2009.

Past Red Herring winners include Google, Yahoo!, Skype, Netscape, Salesforce.com, and YouTube. What got mob4Hire on a list that includes companies like Twitter? Mob4Hire President and Founder Paul Poutanen says “I think that we have an elegant solution to a large problem in a massive industry. There is really no one else doing what we do in the same way. There are 3 billion mobile phones in use today and a massive amount of software being written for those handsets. There is no effective way to test on a foreign network unless you are on that network. It is a location specific problem which plays perfectly to the strengths of our crowd-sourced methodology.”

Using Web 2.0 social networking, Mob4Hire reduces mobile application testing costs and time to market by connecting developers with crowd sourced testers and focus groups. Why do people participate in Mob4Hire? Smart incentives and a well-run crowdsourcing community. Developers get their apps tested, certified and into the app store. Testers get paid and have ahead-of-market access to the newest, greatest apps for mobile phones.

The Chaordix team is extra proud of these guys because they got their start within our early Cambrian House community!  : )

We’d love to hear about your example of great crowdsourcing at work.

Shelley