uTest Is Crowdsourcing Software Testing

By Craig Agranoff    December 16th, 2008

Crowdsourcing is a popular concept amongst so-called gurus and those who’d like to think they can predict the future of online business models. So far, though, few have been able to make crowdsourcing really work. On some levels, the idea of building a community and then later utilizing it to create a monetized business model is pretty easy, but few have successfully made the transition from community-building to actual income generation.

It appears that uTest may be one of those few. The model is pretty simple: clients post software to be tested and the community of testers at uTest then have at it. The first one to find a bug, gets paid. As more bugs are found, the price can change, going down or up. The more demand there is for the testing, the higher the payment and vice versa.

That’s the over-simplified version of how the site works, as there are many details involved in how the client can choose the criterion for testing and who the testers will be (by various grades). Testers, in turn, are graded both on how quickly and how often they find bugs and by the client themselves based on interaction with the bug reporting process.

One big advantage that uTest has is that coders, developers and software engineers have always made great crowdsource communities. This is primarily due to the already-established open community many of these software professionals are already a part of, such as open source and online tutorial forums.

Another milestone was reached when uTest converted all ten of the pilot participant clients into paying customers when they went live in August. Revenues, according to uTest, have grown 150 percent since and its community of testers spans 144 countries with over 12,000 members.

Longworth Venture Partners apparently believed that uTest has the potential to seriously tap into the $13 billion software testing industry and agreed to $5 million in Series B funding for uTest earlier this month.

With the continued globalization of the software industry, crowdsourcing may indeed be coming into its own.

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Most Commented

  • Nice innovative idea in this web 2.0 world. making such community is wonderful idea. And sustaining with that idea and earning huge money made me more interesting towards this community.
  • Thats a good idea. With this who needs PPC Ads or advertisement to monetize your sites.
  • As an ex software developer and tester, this sounds like a really powerful concept to me. Will be very suitable for
    some products where the amount of business knowledge is low, but for more advanced applications where the
    business knowledge will be higher, I don't think it will be quite as appropriate. Perhaps Microaoft will consider it
    for Windows 7 and then we could fix the bugs before everyone else finds them!
  • utestservices
    hi
  • Gathering all talents and experienced users into a community is a great move as seen. They can interact, gather,discuss everything or anything in relation to the industry. Problems surfaced might be easily solved through discussions.
  • jonaw
    Indeed a good online business model.It inspires to get a community start up and start the cash rolling in!Easy to say,tough for actions. I believe in lots of efforts in researching on getting the community going and of course experience wise as a quality analyst.
  • ryanlow
    I believe creativity do set into place when building up a community.Testing of software are essential to most companies as they would want to have losses cut to the minimal. Its like you sell, I buy concept. Simple and sweet. Great prospect in the future!
  • ezditto
    Will try joining the community!
  • dupleang
    Guess its really the future online business model.
  • ezdisqus1
    This seems like a really good industry to work on!
  • replicaloh
    Great site. I guess lots will be swarming in to get things tested.
  • It is a good concept. uTest is building a huge pool of potential paying customers thereby tapping on the lucrative software testing industry.
  • Community you build are your potential paying customers. With this who needs PPC Ads or advertisement to monetize your sites.
  • oh. Do you have more information about Crowdsourcing ? This is my first time hearing this term. Sounds cool. Thanks for the useful information.
  • Craig has given a link to an article in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing). The article is quite comprehensive and has a lot of links to other materials.
  • thanks for the link about crowdsourcing. The utest website also calls it "community testing". it is surely an interesting and new idea. Looking at the site now, it seems that they are doing well too.
  • Software and webware testing is an important part in a product launch and its future development. I have personally done some testing of new web2.0 applications at many webmaster forum and have seen many failed without launching.
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