Twitter co-founder Biz Stone is back to work on his social Q&A app Jelly. The app, which started development in January 2014, stopped development in November of 2014 so Stone could pivot to his opinion sharing app, Super. But as TechCrunch’s Josh Constine reported today, Stone is back at work, and reservations for Jelly usernames are open now, and publication of the app is in final stages as the last kinks are worked out.
The premise for Jelly is quite brilliant. It’s whole purpose is to save people from sifting through Google searches when trying to find answers to their questions (almost like ChaCha, but a mobile app instead of an SMS service) Here’s a helpful chart from Biz Stone himself to demonstrate how it works:
The Pros:
Seeking an Expert
Instead of open-sourcing answers in a public forum like Yahoo Answers or Wiki How, you actually gets answers from a select group of users who actually are considered “experts” in that field by Jelly. So the chances are greater that you’ll be getting informative answers from people who are actually exceedingly knowledgeable in that field.
Becoming an Expert
Guess what? There’s something out there that you know more about than most people. Seriously! You’re an expert at something. It may be as important as engineering or as trivial as Rick and Morty quotes (that would be my expertise), but you’re probably invested enough in something that you’re an expert in it. And Jelly acknowledging that expertise and allowing you to share your knowledge with other users could be a very affirming experience.
The Cons: Time Sensitivity
The soul-purpose of this app is to save you time from drudging through ad space on Google. Stone himself even wrote in the Jelly Q&A “…it’s not instantaneous, but it’s timely, and you’re getting quality over quantity. We think people will like this.” But let’s face it, the lack of instant gratification will be a turnoff for people. It seems to me the only reason Jelly would really be necessary if the Wikipedia entry on the subject at hand had too little information or was too vague.
Becoming an Expert
So how do you an expert at Jelly? On the sign-up page, I typed in “Wrestling” in the interests section. Now if some asked me who the current IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Champions were, I would of course reply “The Young Bucks”. But if someone asked me who had the shortest NWA World Heavyweight Championship reign, I wouldn’t know that. That would be something that I would have to look up. So at the end of the day, someone is sifting through Google searches or Wikipedia trying to find the answer (a quick Wikipedia search revealed the answer as a tie between Ray Gonzalez and Shane Douglas for less than one day, apparently).
I’m not sure how the public will receive Jelly, and I won’t make any predictions on it’s success, but I am signed up for it, so hopefully someone will finally be able to give me a straight answer on what happened in the last scene in Birdman.
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