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Mob4Hire is a privately held Canadian Web 2.0 company that focuses on crowd sourced mobile application testing services (see also: List of crowdsourcing projects) and market research in the global wireless telephony space.〔http://www.mob4hire.com/about.php〕 The company facilitates the relationship between mobile application developers and professional users who test the functionality and assess the usability of the application(s) under consideration for a negotiated fee.〔()〕 The services are based on a bidding model with a fixed-fee structure. As the broker for these transactions, Mob4Hire derives revenue as a flat percentage of each transaction agreed to by the developer and tester. The company also accrues income from up-front licensing fees, ongoing subscriptions, managed accounts and other services. The business model also incorporates enterprise customers. “Mob4Hire As A Platform” () effectively re-brands the Mob4Hire model. O2 Litmus, a British division of the global carrier Telefonica has implemented Mob4Hire technology and launched their own community of developers and testers. ==General overview== Mob4Hire brokers relationships between mobile application developers and a global testing community. Developers post pre-release applications and associated test plans to the community, and specify which handsets and networks are under consideration. Individuals (or groups) registered in the testing community (Mob) that are able to fulfill the functional requirements of the test bid for the contract, and developers select testers based on such criteria as the community ranking of the tester, turn-around time for delivered test reports, the tester’s desired pay-scale and other metrics. Mob4Hire is responsible for holding payment in escrow until the developer is satisfied. Once the developer has approved the test report, monies are then released to the tester via PayPal.〔http://www.mob4hire.com/developerhowitworks.php〕 The developer is expected to grade the quality of each tester. This feedback establishes a rating hierarchy among the testing community; the intent is to continually improve the overall quality the application test reports and grade the relative skill and efficacy of the individual testers. Mob4Hire is also concerned with the user experience of mobile applications. The process involved is similar to the functionality testing except that the testers are focused on the usability of the application being considered and the overall user experience rather than a purely functional assessment. A paradigm of software design is that developers are the least desirable group to test their own releases and, in general, developer bias can be mitigated by employing a testing group completely independent of the design process. The testers are locally based on the actual networks on which the applications will be launched and as such, their assessment more closely emulates genuine market feedback than ‘in-house’ testing conducted remotely from the network. Developers conduct mobile surveys in the global space by paying testers to download applications and complete a survey with demographic information relevant to the developer. The intent is to collect key market research from a community of unbiased early adopters with minimized costs to the developer.〔()〕 Examples of typical survey questions may include: Was the application intuitive? How would you describe the user experience? Would you pay for the application and if so, how much? Were there features that should be included or enhanced? How did the interface appear on the handset? Would you recommend the application? Mob4Hire builds and maintains a global community of application developers and testers. There are currently almost 1,000 registered developers and market research firms in 111 countries and 42,000 registered testers in 142 countries. The testers represent 364 carrier networks. Mob4Hire is also associated with 20 professional entities that develop, test and port mobile applications.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mob4Hire」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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