What if you could outsource your more repetitive, menial digital tasks to people playing social networking games like FarmVille? Who knows, they might even do it for free if it allowed them to get stuff for their virtual farms. 

This is an idea being bandied about by Wili Miettinen, CEO of the Finnish company Microtask, reports Liz Gannes at GigaOm. "Game designers are the experts in motivating people and getting them to do repetitive stuff," Miettinen said.

Microtask makes software that breaks work down into standardized tasks that take one to two seconds to complete, such as entering data from paper to a database. As long as people are working, the program continues to line up tasks for them. Customers can buy seat licenses for the software and use their own employees, or they can turn the work over entirely to Microtask. The company guarantees its offering with service level agreements.

If Microtask could convince the powers behind FarmVille to go along with its idea for putting FarmVille players to work, more players could potentially be monetized.

For more:
- see Liz Gannes' post at GigaOm

Related Articles:
Pay-what-you-like game bundle pirated by a quarter of users
Does gaming at work improve productivity?