I have a fascination with mechanical turks and “freelance” online labour. Whether it is for skilling up MMO characters to sell for cash or joking about outsourcing my time sheets, I am happy to have strangers on the internet helping me out with menial electronic tasks. And I’m really interested in the economies and labour force behind the jobs too. This emerging workforce is varied, from a bored student in Saskatchewan to a computer sweatshop in India, there is always someone somewhere on the web willing to spend a few hours clicking away for a little cash.

My fascination recently led me to Fiverr, a site that is great for quirky art kids to draw MSPaint portraits or pose for funny pictures at $5 a pop. Fiverr keeps 20%, and workers can make some nice pocket money. There’s other sites like this out there, TechnoBuffolo reports that Fiverr has “spawned several clone sites, like Fourerr.com, Goferr.com, Tenbux.com, TaskArmy.com,Gigsbucks.com, and Uphype.com.” The market is huge.

One thing that grabbed my attention on Fiverr is the abundance of offerings on the front page for Facebook relationship status stand-ins. “I will be your Facebook girlfriend for $5.” Exploring these posts and it seems that some are genuine young ladies renting out their relationship status, but most appear to be fake accounts, part of networks of other fake accounts, boasting thousands of friends and photo albums of beach vacations. Complete with reviews from former customers (surely most of these are fake too?), and filed under Social Marketing, there clearly is a market for impressing your old high school friends with a fake fb hottie.

Along with menial Excel tasks, online influence is being bought and sold, from large scale social marketing scams and now apparently your Facebook friends. Is there any task that you can’t pay someone to do online?