• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, May 4, 2011

Gigwalk plans to launch Wednesday after being in private beta for six months with $1.7 million in seed funding from a handful of tech-industry heavyweights.

Gigwalk connects businesses to a mobile workforce community known as Gigwalkers, who complete a variety of tasks using an iPhone to verify street names, product positions in a store or more. It gives brands insight into how their products are positioned. Ariel Seidman, CEO and co-founder at Gigwalk and a former Yahoo mobile executive, calls the service the "first on-demand mobile workforce."

While navigation tech company TomTom participated in the test phase, other businesses, such as marketers, can tap into the technology and workforce to verify product placement and positioning of products in stores.

TomTom used Gigwalk to verify real-world map data attributes. The Gigwalk community delivered up-to-date geo-tagged photographic evidence that gave TomTom an accurate means to update its database.

Verizon or AT&T, for example, could post a gig on the Gigwalk network asking consumer reporters who have signed up for the task to visit one of their nearby stores to check where the Motorola phones get positioned on the store floor. "Do the sales reps push people into Motorola devices or iPhones?" Seidman said.

Gigwalk is live in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, and Miami, with more to come later this year. Companies can tap into a pool of Gigwalkers, who earn as much as $1,600 monthly. Gigs can range between $3 and $90, depending on the task and timing.

Seidman admits that one of the biggest issues the company faces as it expands worldwide is finding qualified Gigwalkers to do the job. "The guys who work in the Geek Squad and Apple's Genius bar make good Gigwalkers," he said.

AdMob investor Michael Dearing of Harrison Metal, Mint.com investor Jeff Clavier at SoftTech VC, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman of Greylock Discovery Fund put money into the pot. LiveOps co-founder Bill Trenchard of founder Collective and Alex Llyod of Accelerator Ventures, also participated in the round.