Those out there who are interested in current developments in crowd sourcing and practical trends in social media might be interested in some of the companies that we encountered recently. One that I was told to have a look at is a San Francisco based venture called Aardvark (or Vark - some may have seen the link tweeted yesterday)
Aardvark was apparently conceived by some smart ex-googlers and is a little like a cocktail of ask jeeves, bongo (except free), IM and social networking all in real time. Like a live suggestion / wikipedia / editorial engine drawn up out of a user network (haven't seen current stats on network numbers).
Basically you sign up, and are prompted to nominate a few things on which you have an opinion, or possibly even some expertise e.g. dirty martinis, hotels with pillow menus or Carlton FC...
obviously in my case your interests may be self limiting.
Once you have a profile Aardvark inserts itself as one of you contacts (IM or Email) When set up you can then begin conversations or ask specific questions by messaging Aardvark as you would any other contact.
So I signed up and gave it a try. Sure enough Aardvark was instantly available and prompted me to try a question. I couldn't think of much but I asked for a list of the top 5 restaurants in San Francisco, just to see if I knew any or had possibly been to one (pre-GFC).
Within a couple of minutes I had three different responses from connected contacts somewhere in the Varkness - actually they were from New York, Canada and San Francisco - as the Aardvark told me who and where they were. All had suggested different restaurants (with some crossover), but also asked for more specific details as to my tastes in food e.g. Thai, Modern, five star etc... I knew some of them and overall it was a quality response to a loosely framed question.
That, so my new friend Aardvark told me virtually at that moment, is the first rule of asking your network questions - be as specific as you can with plenty of detail. No one wants to waste time guessing what you are after or thinking up a topic to talk about - fair enough.
So far the Aardvark is working for me.
No obvious revenue model as yet but no doubt that will emerge. Maybe "response sponsored by" or something like that. In short they are building a useful social network by piggybacking Q&A on IM networks? Seems there is an iPhone App coming soon so that may be the starting point of a commercial proposition.
Let me know your thoughts, especially if you have met Aardvark already...
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