Tinbag Launches, Soon To Enter DeadPool

Not to mention it looks like a grade 8 made the site on Frontpage

Time for a “But this time, it’s different!” category?

The likely outcome of Tinbag not withstanding - the failure of Google Answers is no yardstick to compare new companies with.

Google never tried hard with Google Answers. Although anyone could post a question, the number of experts allowed to claim and answer those questions was limited and frozen early on. You also knew little about these experts except the questions they had previously answered and any ratings provided. Unbalanced supply and demand, and failure to tap into “on the Internet everyone is an expert on something” phenomena. It appears on this new site anyone can set up to be an expert, and advertise their wares.

Unless you meant it in jest, What do you find odd about charging the questioner and paying a fee to the person who answers ? Seems a perfect match for the way the value flows. I am sure the fees could be set next to nothing, or some people could answer at no cost if they so desired.

Serious research and compilation on the Internet is hard or at least time consuming. A simple search is all you need ? Please. High Precision and Recall are still ambitious goals. I am happy to pay someone money to do some ground work for me.

There is a pony in this business, maybe in a vertical, and Tinbag’s me too approach may yet fail for any number of reasons, but the failure of Google is no reason someone else cant figure it out.

What other internal initiatives has Google succeeded at lately ?

I think the ‘make people pay for answers’ model is definitely workable… There are plenty of people out there who will pay for good, qualified answers to their questions…

I would focus on high-value, highly-specific (probably geo-centric) questions that require deep understanding of the problem and real-world experience - where the right answer can save the ‘asker’ heaps of money…

I would pitch it exactly like that - ‘answers that are guaranteed to save you thousands’…

I guess it’d be a cross between a consultant matching service that focused on facilitating communications, and a personal shopping service… These probably already exist somewhere, maybe not on a local level though - not sure…

If Tinbag wants to be taken seriously it should:

1. Do a total re-design. The site looks very mickey-mouse.

2. Switch to an ad revenue model.

3. Retain the pay for answers model in segments and phase it our if it keeps falling flat on its face.

As it stands, this will never pay for itself, and because they’re short of revenue the site will just look BAD. So, Tunbag, borrow some money and dress yourself up, please. Then get some ads and pay the money back.

Michael…I think the post makes a lot of sense. If Google can’t spin a business idea with all that cash, then who can??

Notwithstanding, I wonder, given TC’s sphere of influence, if a post like this would not seal their fate.

On the other hand, I guess a good product must be able to stand up to scrutiny regardless of source and besides, people can always visit the site and make up their own minds.

ouch! ouch! ouch!

if a startup gets a writeup like this on techcrunch, will it ever be looked at in positive lights again? the fairness of michael’s accessment notwithstanding… i feel for the poor souls at tinbag.

Isn’t Yahoo Answers and every other Q & A site free? So this site isn’t innovating they’re going backwards. It usually takes at least a 2x improvement in a service to lure people away from an entrenched competitor.

The Q&A pay model is slightly similar to HelpShare which has been around since 2000.

Some vc will probably throw 5 million at it tomorrow…

Reminds me of EXP.com meets keen.com in ummmm……1998.

Michael,

The fact that Google couldn’t make it worthwhile doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

Several companies that serve the hedge fund community do very well on “paid answers.” Gerson Lehrman fees can get to $250K+ a year for many of their clients. Corporate Executive Board is similar in the corporate space. The Advisory Board in the healthcare space.

Tinbag appears to be too broad to be comparable but believe me that “paid answers” are very much alive and well.

the name deserves to be in the deadpool!

why are techcrunch commenters always so brutal?

I once payed $100 on Google Answers to find out what to do when my dog had a gas problem. Worked for me!

Why is everybody so scared of criticism? The startup realm needs a dose of reality, it’s all a little airy fairy

I am sure these guys will heed the advice and come back strong.

Why oh why, I don’t know why anyone would even try.

tinbag - what the hell is a tinbag?

the site design feels very watery; not very substancy

i’d rather search the web for free, it it takes me 2-3x as long, than rather pay for answers to my questions - and trust me, you’ll find your answers on the web

It’s one thing to enter an already saturated market with a “me-too” play. It’s another to enter a market that other people consider failed with an “also-ran” play. Neither are ultimately very interesting, unless one comes to the game with a new secret sauce. The hard part is actually having that sauce though. What’s the angle everyone else missed here?

Tinbag was started by one guy whose blog can be found at CapecodeHQ.com. I am sure that he keeps his costs low on Tinbag, and he only needs a few steady customers to make it worth his while. He has a post on his blog titled “What’s the Big Idea?” that might shed a little light on his motivation. In it, he lays out what I think is a pretty good business model for a guy just looking to make a good living as his own boss using his web development skills.

The problem with most web startups (and the reason they end up in the DeadPool) is that they try to make themselves out to be something bigger than they actually are…just a handful of tech geeks who put out a mediocre-to-good product just like what 50 other handfuls of nerds put out just last week. I think this guy has a healthy outlook on what his product is and what he is trying to accomplish, and I believe he will be able to do it.

I don’t know why Google failed, but I do know that the goals of a multi-billion dollar corporation are very different from the goals of one man producing a similar product. In my opinion, to compare the two from a business model perspective makes very little sense.

Wow.

I went to look at one of the sample Web sites, and it asks me upfront for a $9.95 one-month ticket. For one of the subsites.

I can’t see any information about the expert. I can’t see any previous questions or answers. And they want $9.95 from me up front. In PayPal.

Ouch. No.

What an unfortunate name. Hopefully Richard hasn’t soured the bag of tin- names for all of us.

I hope the Tinbag folks work out the rough edges and prove TechCrunch wrong and make a lot of money. While the business idea wouldn’t be my first choice, it’s important to note that most of world’s most successful companies once had naysayers telling prospective founders that they couldn’t do it.

Also a dead shame they can’t spell for beans… “question tile”, “you’re questions” ??!!!

actually…

the idea of pay for answer is quite valid, depending on what the question/answer/category is. in some realms it’s called consultants!!

you need to find the right niche and to focus like hell. you need to have a well defined/respected group of people who can provide answers. you need to be able to find a cheap way of gathering initial customers, and then to be able to refine the questions and to make sure they are issues that can be researched in a reasonable amount of time.

the basic goal is to create a research for pay site.

far really basic/simple questions, of course it doesn’t make sense. for medium level research issues, it could be a solid money making site.

the fact that idea could have been tried before, or by numerous people doesn’t in and of itself mean it can’t work… recall, google (search) was supposed to be pretty dead as alta-vista had cornered the market!!…

-bruce

How is this different from the 3.7 billions of forums out there, where very capable people are answering questions for free?

One stop shopping for all questions… No offense… but does that seem a bit goofy to anyone else? How can any one entity purport to bring together experts from EVERY industry together. It seems like they’re really diluting the brand to death. Call me nutty… but isn’t target marketing part of Marketing 101?

Jeff N
jeffn@startupattitude.com
http://www.startupattitude.com

good luck to tinbag

The only answers I would ever pay for would be “How do i…” on a very specific level. For example how do I edit my specific Drupal theme to do this…, how do I rebuild the radiator on my 75 AMC Pacer.., and so on (I would expect these answers to be completed in an easy to read/follow tutorial. Any thing else just use traditional forums and Google.

There have been a few times I have been unable to find answers to a few specific questions though its always fun to jump into something and to figure it out yourself.

hard to believe that where google failed, they will succeed… but if they will do, google will buy them

This sounds a lot like Keen.com’s “find an expert and pay to ask questions” model. I heard that it worked really well for the astrology stuff and were actually making some pretty good money in that area.

I guess the question is, how is THIS different from keen. LOL.

Haha.. I took a look at Keen again and apparently I was right.. it worked so well that Keen became a psychic reading site and spun the other stuff into Ingenio and focused on the person-to-person call aspect vs the pay-per- answer model.

But anyways, I wouldn’t say its a dead idea. As they say Search was dead until Overture came along.

I don’t see how this is new, obviously this kind of market is indeed saturated and it has no future.

Mike, you have to keep 2 things in mind:
1) Google ain’t the most innovative software product company in the world; it has mastered several duds
2) The level of revenue that Google would frown upon might be palace riches for a small company

The problem I have with the typical pay-for-answer model is that I hate to offer money only to have some idiot answer my question. That’s why I never used Google’s service. If this new site will let a serious expert present his credentials, I’m more likely to shell him a few bucks for an answer (like for a serious tech issue) that I don’t want to waste another 30 mins trying to hunt down on Google or in Google Groups.

If they have a great spread of subject area experts covering the right topics, I think this idea has a great chance of flying if they can find a way to attract eyeballs.

Jon,

Good comment. This is why I wrote about them. First, even a bad review is probably better for them than no review at all. And I like to see what readers think as well. Disagreement is good.

Hi, I really enjoy techcrunch but sometimes I think you set ignore flag for http://www.bitwine.com. You mentioned ether as example of similar bussines models to tinbag, it would be nice to hear something about bitwine.

The Google Answers comparison is relevant but not the end of the story. Whether or not Google Answers failed (I’m not convinced it did), it’s certainly conceivable that a different company with more focus could pursue the opportunity effectively. There are a host of reasons why Google may have chosen to close Google Answers other than that it “failed”.

There is still market for paid QnA sites. Proof of that is http://www.experts-exchange.com
However, Experts-Exchange is popular because it already has such a large number of people willing to provide answes.

“Consultants”..”Subject Area Experts”..”Serious Research Tools.” The synonyms don’t work.

This is a too simply designed site that lacks focus. Even if you accept the Q&A pay model (I don’t) these guys are small enough that they need a clear niche. They didn’t pick one.

Shakespeare said it best: “A Tinbag by any name….”

It’s good to make reviews, but I wonder why (or who gave us the moral right) to condemn firms just as they launch. I agree with Adrian and Mark Coker above. Give people are chance to create something. If it fails, then they learn and move on. If it succeeds, you would be ashamed to eat your words. Am launching a start up friendly service that is aimed at showcasing new firms as they are so that the users/public would check them out and see things for themselves.

Vic Okezie | http://www.adxmart.com

Vic - regarding your last sentence: Don’t startup’s website already showcase themselves as “they are”? Without commentary, what’s the point?

When someone starts paying for a Q&A, they will expect a quality answer as well that comes with it. How would you determine the quality/ knowledge factor of the person charging for answers? And you can just as easily goto Yahoo and get multiple answers to choose from for free.

I believe that if it were to be successful, it should focus on a specific job market discipline/niche instead of targeting anyone and everyone. They should not try to compete with Yahoo Answers and the general public. Where Yahoo Q&A is a one for all answering board to the public, Tinbag should market itself as a tool to help established or experienced professional earn some money… a sort of “Ask the Expert” tool e.g. a more individual based expert-exchange.com. The lawyers, the accountants, the engineers etc. That in itself will be the differentiator.

So I could see this working in the professional market or already established people with credibility. For example, Jonathan Snook (http://snook.ca) the CSS god, would maybe want to start charging for answering questions on CSS — he could use Tinbag as a tool. And I would totally pay for it as I know the answer I’ll get will be one of high quality rather than posting my question up on Yahoo and having the potential of getting 3-4 answers from so-called experts that don’t measure up and do not have an vested interest in making you happy.

Saying all that, Tinbag seems to be just a tool, they didn’t really say whether they have or will have the ability to command a huge following to make the person profit. Will they have some sort of directory/ category system of professionals to choose from? Will they drive potential customers to your site? If not, there isn’t any difference from just using paypal and implementing the code in a simple html page to do the same thing.

Except Yahoo Answers has very few quality answers and is mostly populated by kids asking how they can tell if their bf/gf likes them. This site is super ugly with a seemingly forced “web 2.0″ look. If it looked more serious and grew a large userbase, I think it has chances to succeed.

Google’s version of this product failed in my opinion because it wasn’t advertised enough and they didn’t give it the attention it deserves - compared to google’s other products.

Mike,

yeah commentary is good, and I support that, but how about ‘condemnation’. I think these two scenarios are different. I might not use tinbag, but some people might use this service - and if ‘you’ use this very ‘powerful’ medium to determine their fate (in your own opinion) before we even get to know them (before they even test the time), then I wonder if people will have the courage to start firms. Imagine if someone powerful determined your fate when you launched Techcrunch on June 2005 - in a bad light. Commentary yeah, but its probably better to give everyone a fair chance. Some of the firms you gave good reviews and who raised VC fundings, have packed up. How do we explain that?

adxmart looks like Yet Another Million Dollar Homepage Clone. Try something original next time, Vic!

The only question they can answer is “How to get Michael Arrington’s attention without doing anything unique?”

Mike - if the owner contacts you to change the title, will you? remember when you said that the other one got it wrong and you updated it.

You use titles way over the top so often. This is the new valleywag. I agree with Vic, Mike says he likes disagreement so he puts out things like this?

There is a big difference btw saying “so and so launched. what do you think” and “this is the worst sh** ever, now what do you think”. Blah.

The fact of the matter is that Michael highly influences opinions. He can help make a company, “but not destroy it”. The main reason a startup wont succeed can be found in the quality of their products, their “funding” (maybe), but most likely it will depend on how hungry and creative the founding team is.
That being said, when Mike and the crowd give a negative review, swallow it and learn from it. Easier said than done, but do it. Just remember one failed startup doesnt mean that you are a bad entrepreneur or that you product is not good enough. You may be ahead of the game (although it isnt likely so) or you may in a tough zone (and who wants small challenges?). Either ways there is always room for creativity and changes. STAY HUNGRY MAN> ONE

Mike, how many answers have you provided on Yahoo Answers?

#42 said… “Where Yahoo Q&A is a one for all answering board to the public, Tinbag should market itself as a tool to help established or experienced professional earn some money…”

That’s exactly what Tinbag is. It is a tool for individuals to use to make some money answering people’s questions. One common criticism that I have read in this thread is that Tinbag is not focused on a niche. I think Tinbag is very much focused on a niche, and that is professionals, bloggers, experts, etc. who want to make a little extra money charging people to answer their questions.

They are not trying to market directly to the end user who has a question he needs answered. They leave that up to the expert who is using Tinbag as a tool to answer those questions for pay.

I heard Google dropped Answers not becaus it failed, but because they want to get out of the content business. Think of how many Q&A sites there are already, in every imaginable category. Practically all of them run Adsense, and they’re the backbone long tail monetization. Google would rather drive traffic to those players than try to siphon off their content advantage.

Even YouTube is pursuing this to a certain degree by allowing users to grab the YT equivalent of a domain name (e.g. youtube.com/my-topic)

I agree with Cory, tinbag’s idea is to allow experts to monetize their knowledge and expertise. It may succeed, if it sticks to this.
I know lots of people who would be happy to share their experience.
After all, experience is the most expensive thing you have.

interesting comments…

regarding the issues that have been raised on whether a site should be trashed, implying that mike has the ability to influence the success/failure chance of a venture… never really thought about it like that. he might. but i would ask why? in scanning what people here write, i’ve always taken everything here with a huge grain of salt, given that i don’t know the backgrounds of anyone here, excet the two people i’ve actually talked/emailed with. for everyone else, they might be 12 year olds… (no offense to 12 year olds!)

the point i’m trying to make, is that you need to do your own due dilligence to determine if what’s being presented would/could work.

as far as a Q&A site. in my mind, a generic ‘free’ site, isn’t that useful. however, if you want to kick it up a notch, and make a venture that’s focused on the kinds of research issues that you can find answers for, for questions that might be outside the tech realm, then yeah, it has value.

as an example:
i’m trying to figure out how to create/implement a sales strategy. if i could find someone to fire of a question, and pay $30-40 to for a good solution, and contacts, hell yes it would be worth it…

as far as i can tell, this kind of site doesn’t really exist…

-bruce

To anyone at tinbag who might be reading this…

1. I couldn’t type tinbag.com and get to your site. I got an error page. It’s a custom error page on your end, not a generic 404 page.

2. On your custom 404 page, you have the message

“Can’t find what your looking for?”

in very big letters. The “your” should be “you’re”.

The fix to #1 was to use http://www.tinbag.com. Why is it that in 2007 people still have a hard time setting up URLs without the “www” to either just work as expected or redirect to the appropriate URL? I hear ‘tinbag.com’ and that’s what i’m going to type. Look at the number of people hitting the 404 page, then look at the number of people that immediately go to the www page. The difference is how many visitors you’re losing.

Good luck on the venture…

I am of the opinion that everyone is an expert at something.

I think that the future of Q/A sites is in info-heavy industries (for example, chemical engineering) whereby the site/product leverages the collective brain of the community. Rather then drive it by advertising (bleck), charge a small subscription fee precisely to act as a filter to keep out non-experts looking for info that can be readily found anywhere.

Instead, have a community of experts and set up a system where to get answers, you have to give answers to questions too. For example, you could earn “points” by answering questions and having your answers approved/rated by others. The higher your rating, the more points you get. You then could use the points to pay to post your own questions. If you didn’t have any questions of your own, you could even sell your earned points to other users who don’t have any points, thereby creating an actual way for the heaviest contributors to actually make a few bucks.

Anyway, I do not agree that just because Google failed that tinbag will necessarily fail. However, having a “ask a question, find an answer” free for all is far too messy in my view to ever get real traction.

Cory (#50):

I would like to think they are focusing on a niche. Because unless you digg deeper or read between the lines, they aren’t mentioning anything of it.

If you go to their front page, it is pretty generic and if you look at their showcase of 5 sites, none of them actually state what kind of credentials they have besides the Joomla developer (having 5 years experience). The rest seem to be the same guys calling themselves experts on the Yahoo Answers site. If you look at their showcase, there is one “Zobbster - a geek amongst men. Looking for things that only the shadier side of the Internet can provide? Speak to me, I’ll help as best I can. 99.56% of all my friends would recommend me!” That to me just brings down the whole site credibility and makes me think of whether they truly have some sort of focus.

Right now, I won’t pay for a Q/A from any of these as there is nothing to show me that they are experts. It doesn’t give me a feeling that they are doing relevant targeting. It’s currently a free for all who want to sign up.

I would make sure that each person who creates a site prominently displays their credentials, qualification and what makes them and expert. So a person looking on the individual sites can see how qualified he/she is. If you are going to be a so called Opensource/Linux or Laser Scanning Expert, show me why that is? Tell me why I’ll pay $250 for a Q/A… Is it through 25 years of development/ experience, do you have a doctorate in the field or do you have 3 months of playing with it in your house and you helped family/ friends (who called you an expert). I think my point is pretty clear here.

I am hard pressed to see what is in it for the person signing up and creating a site… I don’t see any directories where someone a potential customer can browse nor any mention of whether they will help drive traffic to them. When I say it was just a “tool”, I actually meant to say a “standalone tool” where once you sign up… you are left on your own. Without differentiation, it is another only another payment system (out of the thousands out there) and nothing else.

Just because google does it and fails doesn’t mean anything. Google is focused on a thousand different products. I haven’t even checked out Tinbag yet, but the premise that if google fails at something, than why even bother is crazy. Reminds me of people who said FreshDirect (in NYC) wouldn’t work because WebVan didn’t work. FreshDirect just delivered 10 people groceries in my building today. Anyway, there’s been lots of great feedback from others comments here. Let’s see if Tinbag is able to execute before we all kick em.

@Mark (#56)…

I think you make some valid points. But, I do not think this site is set up to reach the end user (question asker) directly. Let me explain what I think the business model is with an example.

Hypothetically, let’s say that I am an expert in web 2.0 startups. Furthermore, let’s say that I have a very popular blog - we’ll call it “TechBunch” - with thousands of readers. Being that my blog is so popular, I get hundreds of e-mails every day asking me something about how to start a web 2.0 company. I decide to use Tinbag to accept payments from people who are willing to pay me to get an answer to their questions. Tinbag has an interface where the user pays, asks the question, then waits for my answer. In the meantime, the user can browse the hundreds of other questions people have already asked me and I have answered via Tinbag. I have already established my credibility as a web 2.0 startup expert through my blog, and my Tinbag page is essentially just a way to manage paid FAQ’s.

I hope that makes sense. I do not see Tinbag as a marketplace for questions and answers. Instead, I see it as a paid FAQ management tool for experts. If you have the proper credentials, you will probably do pretty well with your Tinbag site. If not, you will probably not have any subscribers. It’s free, so anyone can sign up as an “expert”, but the free market will ultimately decide if that “expert” is truly an expert worth paying for answers.

Our tech partner mentioned this to me the other day - I should have guessed he read about it here. The feature, if you will, of setting up your *own* subdomain to offer paid tech support is a good one - and something despite the numerous other Q&A sites out there, that hasn’t existed until now.

It’s a great idea, however, I predict they’ll have trouble getting critical mass & developing a bigger reach for their site. Our own Q&A site has nearly 14,000 members now, has been around for nearly four years…and yet, nobody writes about it, talks about, etc. Well, hardly anybody

In my opinion the reason the Q&A model doesn’t work is because it takes to damn long. Our society demands immediate results. When I have a problem I want the answer right now! It’s like changing the channel on your tv remote but having to wait 30 minutes for the channel to change. By that time I’m on to something else.

Why pay someone to get back to me at some point when in the meantime I’m going to be searching all over the web to find the answer myself anyway?

Only Fortune Telling and Opinion related Q&A will work under this model.

Cory (#56): Yes I tend to agree with you and well said. The market will finally find the credible expert.

So it goes back to it what I call more of a standalone tool. My thoughts are that they need to offer more as there are free scripts out there that do the same thing and paypal too.

I believe the perception from M. Arrington’s post is how it will take on the whole Google and Yahoo Answers user marketplace concept. Tinbag will need to get rid of that perception from many who already look at it that way. I am surprised someone from there hasn’t come here to comment especially since they are a startup.

sorry the post was meant for Cory (#58) no (#56).

And, someone from there really needs to what exactly their business model is as it is all speculation at this point.

Mike, you really haven’t bothered to find out what this site does. It does not compare itself to Google Answers and its ilk, and I don’t know why you have chosen to do so. It works as Cory describes above. Poor journalism, I’m afraid! But in that case, the phrase “all publicity is good publicity” should ring true.

any one remember Keen.com ??
that didn’t work either

After spending some time on the site, I agree with DanL in #64. It appears Tinbag is a pay-for-Help software (plugin?) for people to put on their own sites and blogs.

Frankly, the idea is actually pretty good, all things considered. Bloggers have been burdened with very few ways to make money. Most revenue comes from ads or sponsors or something similar. Implementing a more specialized service like this strikes me as a reasonably good idea.

#65 Dude I mentioned Keen.com on #35.

I think most people didn’t actually visit the site and just took Michael on his word that its like Yahoo or Google answers when in fact its a totally different model. As for what I have to say about Keen, see #35. LOL.

Sorry, I’m a retard, I meant #31

I’d like to start by thanking everyone for their comments, criticisms and advice. It is really hard to get honest opinions from people you know so everyones input has been invaluable to me. Yes I am one person. Of the two or three emails and forms I fill in each day to promote Tinbag.com I did not expect TechCrunch to run the story of a one-man-band outfit. Yes Michael Arrington could have been a bit softer with the article but I doubt it would have received as much interest as it has. And it’s true “all publicity is good publicity” I’ve blown my targets for the next two months.

Firstly I’d like to set the record straight, Tinbag.com was never meant to be in direct competition with services like Yahoo Answers. As I’ve read and reacted to everyones comments the site text has been adjusted to clearly reflect my vision. When Michael first published the article I saw straight away that my original descriptions were too vague. They have been change as new views and opinions appeared. Michael did not report incorrectly, I portrayed the original service too broadly. In the face of bad press you cannot run and hide, you have to react and react I did.

Out of all the posts Cory (#58) hit the nail on the head. Tinbag.com is a tool for someone to easily provide a paid FAQ management service for a product they already have. Mark Johnson (#61) mentions ‘there are free scripts out there that do the same thing’. This is true but not everyone has the time or knowledge to implement them. Tinbag.com provides a means for people to try out the idea of paid support with next to no investment of time or money. If it works for them they can move on to a more elaborate system, if not Tinbag.com has let them find out virtually cost free.

Thanks again for everyones comments and to Michael Arrington for very unexpected but welcome traffic.

Richard Allinson
http://www.tinbag.com

“any one remember Keen.com ?? that didn’t work either”

Keen’s working fine.

“Select the billing that *suites* you best” ???

http://www.tinbag.com/Tour/charging/

Well done to Richard for a gracious and illuminating response.

I’ve got to disagree, I think Google Answers failed largely because of a lack of publicity. I knew about the site, but I’m a bit of an uber-geek. Its prevalence amongst mainstream users was probably quite minimal for this reason. Furthermore, I have posted numerous questions at Yahoo! Answers and have received good answers for only two or three. Yahoo! is okay for general questions, but when it comes to specific topics - such as technical issues, there is much left to be desired.