BitWine Gives Access To Those In The Know
Natali Del Conte
43 comments »
A company called BitWine launched an interactive search site about three weeks ago. It is much like Ether in that it is a call-an-expert service, except BitWine is integrated with Skype. In fact BitWine will be a Skype plugin when Skype 3.0 launches, which will likely be in early 2007.
With BitWine, users deem themselves experts in specific categories and establish their per-minute consulting fee. Then when another curious user needs an answer about a given topic, they can browse the experts in that category, select someone whose price and expertise they prefer, and Skype them live. As soon as the transaction is over, the “expert” is paid via PayPal.
We spoke with BitWine co-founder Alon Cohen today, trying to figure out why this site is necessary and how it is different than Yahoo! Answers or Google Answers.
“When you look at Google Answers and Yahoo Answers, you don’t really know who is answering because it’s chat based and text based,” Cohen said. “For instance, I asked a question last night and I had to rephrase the question three times for people to understand me. One question and one answer is usually not enough. You need a visual conversation with someone you trust.”
On BitWine, experts get ratings based on their consultancy performance. Cohen sees this as a way for people to make money in their spare time off of their random hobbies. After all, where else are you going to sell your consulting services on model ship making or knitting?
Sites like this really are only as good as their community size. What good is an “operators are standing by” scenario, when no one is calling in?
“This is a big issue that we have many concerns about: the chicken and the egg,” Cohen said. “You want experts there to begin with and you want enough traffic there so that the experts will stay.”
He said the company will target experts through blogs and discussion forums and also attempt to create affiliations with other Web sites’ questions pages.
BitWine was founded by Cohen, who was previously the co-founder of VocalTec, a VoIP company, and Elad Baron, who recently sold his company, Whale Communications, to Microsoft.
Wasn’t this called Keen.com during the last bubble?
I don’t understand this concept. Why would someone EARN MONEY for his/her HOBBY? The hobby is for spending money, not earning it. This concept looks crap for me.
How many regurgitations on a theme can we handle…
I bet they’d make millions if they added an “adult” category. prvrtr anyone?
excellent idea, I think, who will refuse some extra money?
I haven’t tried BitWine, but did try 2 unrelated expert services in the distant past. In each case, my payment was refunded because the ‘expert’ did not know more than I did.
Mental note to self: add the word expert to my list of words (such as trust, authority, etc.) which are used irresponsibly on the web to all our detriment.
Vera
Signed up, got started and it took just 5 minutes. Not difficult and I think the concept is great - it’s just a matter of momentum and marketing now. I like the idea of a Taskbar Client. Set your rates in your browser, forget you have it running and wait for an appointment to come in.
I’m on Ether.com too but that never really seemed to work for me (as an advisor on their network). Hmmm.
Just like expertscity.com and keen.com (both gone long time ago)
The difference is they use VOIP instead of making normal calls , which saves them a lot of money.
Its interesting to see web 1.0 failed ideas coming to web 2.0 world , i am definitely going to keep an eye.
Do any of the advisors actually have a rating yet? I couldn’t find any. Regardless, the reputation system they are trying to use can easily be duped.
… and jyve.com too.
Looks like a pretty cool service, but after following all the instructions my skype still refused the software…. I don’t get it.
BitWine and similar companies are going to need to work out the tax implications of their service for experts. Do the experts pay sales tax? Does BitWine? Does anyone? Its a big of a legal quagmire in my opinion. I’d love to do it, but I’d be concerned about the tax implications. Getting a sales tax license is a bit of a pain, especially if its just going to be a “hobby” at first. But when does hobby cross into business?
I’m already running the public preview beta release of Skype 3.0, and Bitwine is already in the Extras manager (Tools->Do more->Get Extras). It worked pretty well to get it setup, so I joined the ranks of experts. There are quite a lot of experts listed, so the supply side seems to work. We’ll see if the demand side manages to take off….
Great idea, also well designed.
Using VOIP here is a great idea.
Wish these guys all the best !!!!
I certainly need expert advices and like to give them too. The question is if I would pay myself for them.
Everyone’s got an opinion – more so if they get paid for it. So the first real question is how valuable the advices are. I’ve got some real questions for the experts. But I’m not feeling comfortable to pay a dollar per minute or ten cents to a “New Member”.
The rating system is a great idea but it cannot work until you have a community AND some experts who are not only excellent at their expertise but also great communicators. Having a lot of un-rated/unqualified experts listed is not good enough yet.
One advice I have for BitWine (and I don’t need to get paid for it
) is to let the New Members offer their expertise for free. They can get paid once they get good ratings. This will allow the company to get the community going.
If BitWine succeeds in attracting highly rated, qualified experts, then the question is how big this market is. How many people are willing to pay how much for this kind of expert advices?
There is a huge off-line market for professional advice like legal and finance. The question is how much of this market can be converted to online. For serious professional advice anyway, one perhaps likes to meet the experts. Then how big is the market for advice on hobbies?
There must be something better than “Time commerce made easy”, the company’s slogan. (I would like to see how many TechCrunchers agree on that.)
The website is simple and clear. It is very pleasant to use. The web designer(s) did an excellent job!
It does exits. It was launched 3 months ago and all is integrated which provides the seller and the buyer a better experience.
I bet on them.
Have a look to http://www.wdeal.com
Well, Google Answers has just announced it is shutting up shop. There’s yer answer! They had 800 users, an internet statistical error of usage.
Google Answers no longer exists… closed down yesterday…
Did you know only 800 people answered queries on Google Answers?
is it a private conversation or are they capturing past consultations and building a searchable knowledgebase with speech-to-text? that’s how the real value could be generated- in retaining the rights and reselling past answers that were paid for by somebody else.
> trying to figure out why this site is necessary and how it is different than
> Yahoo! Answers or Google Answers.
well as of today Google is apparently cutting support for Google Answers:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com.....swers.html
Experts-exchange is another service that has done well with this concept by brokering expertise and having killer SEO on their stuff. Half the time I google an error message, the first result that pops up is that site.
I always thought the hypen in their domain was lame until i realized what it would be without it… doh.
sean
Hi All,
Thank you for your candid feedbacks. Let me try to clarify some of the points raised here:
True, the concept of ask-an-expert has been tried before. However, we believe that adding the real-time element (audio/video based conversation) makes a HUGE difference for the following reasons:
a. it is all about trust. you need to trust the person whom you ask the advice. Seeing and hearing the person (live) significantly contributes to your judgment process about the other party.
b. when you need to get some consultation ( e.g. second opinion about some medical condition, relationship counseling, etc) you need a full duplex conversation - unlike the Yahoo/Google Answers of the world which are just asking a question and waiting for a response.
c. it opens up a whole new set of applications that require the real time channel - like online tutoring, do-it-yourself demos, etc
The other thing I wanted to clarify is that with BitWine, EVERY CALL starts free of charge. Both Client and Advisor need to mutually agree in order to start charging. There is no pre-payment what so ever. So if you don’t feel the Advisor is good for you, don’t start paying. If you do agree to pay, then the exact amount will be transferred to your Advisor immediately following the call (no minimum amounts, no rounding up, really simple).
Last, we have implemented a sophisticated rating mechanism, which takes into account many parameters to try to reduce feedback and rating scams. For example, you have to be present at a call in order to rate the Advisor. And if the price was low/free your rating will count less. However, since we just launched the service most advisors have not yet built up their rating beyond our minimal threshold used to filter out initial variations/abnormalities.
Thanks again to this great community. We just started. Not all is perfect. But we are working really hard and with your help I believe we’ll improve quickly!
Elad Baron
Co Founder
Hi All,
Thank you for your candid feedbacks. Let me try to clarify some of the points raised here:
True, the concept of ask-an-expert has been tried before. However, we believe that adding the real-time element (audio/video based conversation) makes a HUGE difference for the following reasons:
a. it is all about trust. you need to trust the person whom you ask the advice. Seeing and hearing the person (live) significantly contributes to your judgment process about the other party.
b. when you need to get some consultation ( e.g. second opinion about some medical condition, relationship counseling, etc) you need a full duplex conversation - unlike the Yahoo/Google Answers of the world which are just asking a question and waiting for a response.
c. it opens up a whole new set of applications that require the real time channel - like online tutoring, do-it-yourself demos, etc
The other thing I wanted to clarify is that with BitWine, EVERY CALL starts free of charge. Both Client and Advisor need to mutually agree in order to start charging. There is no pre-payment what so ever. So if you don’t feel the Advisor is good for you, don’t start paying. If you do agree to pay, then the exact amount will be transferred to your Advisor immediately following the call (no minimum amounts, no rounding up, really simple).
Last, we have implemented a sophisticated rating mechanism, which takes into account many parameters to try to reduce feedback and rating scams. For example, you have to be present at a call in order to rate the Advisor. And if the price was low/free your rating will count less. However, since we just launched the service most advisors have not yet built up their rating beyond our minimal threshold used to filter out initial variations/abnormalities.
Thanks again to this great community. We just started. Not all is perfect. But we are working really hard and with your help I believe we’ll improve quickly!
Elad Baron
Co Founder
Yawn.
See also:
http://www.ingenio.com/default.asp (Many years old, no VoIP nonsense)
http://www.keen.com (Many years old, no VoIP nonsense)
http://www.ether.com (no centralized directory, but the same idea, no VoIP)
http://www.jyve.com (exactly the same)
http://www.wdeal.com/ (extremely similar)
How are new companies like this still getting funded? How do they attract employees?
Elad:
I see you are addressing some of the questions raised by the TechCrunchers. I’m glad to know that the calls start free. You may want to consider making it very obvious to the visitors of your site.
Saw a demo on BitWine last night, and there was a lot of interest for its call center application possibilities as well….
I have been using http://www.jyve.com which has all that bitwine has and more. This site has lots of member participation and eveyone is chat and skype enabled.
I have made money and spent money on this site and it works. Found it by accident, it seems that this is the team that developed the skype card, presence button, browser synch for Skype over the last few years.
LAst I heard they have close to 90,00 members.
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