For years, people have been turning to the web to ask perfect strangers for advice. But while largely anoymized services like Yahoo Answers have proven to be hugely popular, there’s something to be said for getting advice from people you actually know. Last month we wrote about Aardvark, a social search engine in private beta built by The Mechanical Zoo that distributes your searches across your social graph for quick, highly accurate results that are likely more credible than what you’d get from Yahoo Answers or a normal search engine. Today sees the public launch of another social advice site called Mobspin that is also leveraging the social graph, though in a slightly different manner.
Mobspin CEO Roy Goldman says that while Aardvark is a good service for questions that need near-immediate answers, many questions aren’t that urgent, which is why Mobspin is taking a more passive approach.
To use the site, you first submit a question that you’d like your friends’ help with. But rather than sending out an immediate alert to your friends letting them know that you’d like some help, the site instead sends them sporadic Email digests at intervals they’ve set. Goldman says that friends are generally eager to help anyway, and don’t need to be hit over the head with obnoxious and frequent requests. To help build up your friends list, the site has deep support for Facebook, allowing you to import your friends list as well as syndicate your questions to Facebook News Feeds.
You can also get an overview of the questions you’ve been asked at the Mobspin homepage, which allows users to filter questions by the people who have asked them (you can choose to view questions only from your friends, friends of friends, and so on). The site is also looking to serve as a repository for questions and answers – all submissions will be searchable by keyword, but will be stripped of any identifiable personal data. You can also leave reviews on the site, which are also included in the index.
Mobspin’s biggest obstacle will lie in obtaining critical mass – there isn’t much point in searching the database or submitting a question if you can never find a relevant answer. But it’s a quick way to ask your friends questions, and, unlike Aardvark, it’s publicly available. The site will be going up against a few other similar services, including Ruba, GigPark, and Yotify, which we covered here.
You hit it straight on – critical mass! best of luck though.
Slick, simple, functional – I like it!
I like the possibility of Aadvark more though.
Oh btw.
Check out http://www.jobstaxi.com
New Jobs. Razorfish. Art.com. Edge of Reality.
Give it up. Your website stinks. Stop spamming.
I know Roy, and I have been using Mobspin for several months now, before today’s public launch. It’s easy to use and very fast, and since I have a Facebook account I didn’t even have to create an account on Mobspin. It automatically picked up my Facebook name and photo. Nice. Getting answers and recommendations from my friends and their friends is great, but I’ve also taken the opportunity to tout local businesses I like. It’s cool have a forum where in one fell swoop I can tell a bunch of my friends about a local store that has treated me well. Roy is really receptive to user feedback and has been working hard to implement suggestions that his users have made.
Answers.com, the 2nd largest Q&A site out there…gasp, lost money in their most recent SEC filling.
The third biggest, Answerbag, is arguably only so big because of Demand Media, having raised $400+ million, and then acquiring tons of content businesses & linking them all together (aside from participating in Yahoo’s paid inclusion programs…).
Askville (amazon’s play) and Yedda (AOL paid what, $15 million?) and Answerology (who? Oh, ya, Hearst Corp acquired them)…all these guys & then there are things like fluther (who?) oyogi (you mentioned them here once years ago…) wondir (wonder where the traffic went post acquisition).
General purpose q&a “passive approach” = fail
Q&A, by itself, is simply “forum 2.0″ with a better GUI.
Of course, I’m plenty biased…but, as you can see, I’ve done my homework.
I don’t see the point of a passive approach. Even from a user perspective (recipient) I consider the timeliness of questions to be important. Why wouldn’t someone want answers asap?
Perhaps you should post your question “Why wouldn’t someone want answers asap?” at that site.
I also know Roy and echo Brian’s comments above so I’ll just add that what I love about using Mobspin is helping my friends out. It’s a great feeling to get a question for which you think you have some great business or contractor you can refer. Being a part of a circle of close and extended friends makes it feel personal, versus the very impersonal feel of something like Yelp. Join up and see for yourself!
At http://www.mymission2.com our proposition is quite different … but we have automatic filtering, immediate alerts and daily summaries. We’ve learned a lot from our beta so far and we’re going live with a new release within the next 2 weeks which will have a whole load of new functionality.
I have been using the service for a couple of months and it is quite useful. Most questions I ask are either geographically oriented ( best car mechanic, contractor, etc.) or regarding something that I could only accept advice from somebody I trust and know it is not being spammed by the provider ( doctor, childcare, etc.). That is the problem I have w/ Yelp — for any good recommendation you never know whether it is a satisfied customer or the merchant himself pretending to be a customer. Call me a cynic. Anyway, good job Mobspin !