Fluther, a slick service that lets you outsource your questions to other members on the web, has closed a $600k round of seed funding from some of Silicon Valley’s most notable investors. Included in the round were Ron Conway, Naval Ravikant, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, and Dave McClure, via FF Angel. Rounding out the roster are Twitter’s Biz Stone and Leonard Speiser (Bix, Twables founder), who are advisors.
Using Fluther is pretty straightforward: you visit the site and ask a question, then wait for other members to answer you in real-time (the site offers a reply system similar to FriendFeed’s that lets you view these responses immediately). Whenever you ask a question Fluther reaches out to other members on the site through Email and (optionally) IM alerts, channeling the questions to members it thinks knows the most about the topic.
Fluther faces a few major competitors, including Aardvark, which also lets you outsource your questions to other users on the web. The biggest difference is who each service turns to for answers — Aardvark tries to pair you with knowledgeable people using your social graph (typically you’ll be referred to friends or friends of friends). Conversely, Fluther sends its questions to members that it deems to be the most knowledgeable, independent of your social graph. You can syndicate your Fluther questions out to Facebook, but co-founder Ben Finkel says that there isn’t a strong emphasis on this.
Another player in this space is Mahalo, which launched its Mahalo Answers product last December. Finkel says that Mahalo’s approach, which incentivizes users to answer questions by offering them monetary rewards, inevitably leads to having people trying to game the system with low quality answers. Instead, Fluther is relying on users to submit answers as a show of good will, though it does offer a points reward system for the best answers. It can be hard to attract users with that model, but we’ve seen it work before on sites like Wikipedia and Finkel says that Fluther has developed some very dedicated users.
Fluther soft-launched back in summer 2007, and is seeing around 600,000 monthly unique visitors. Tonight’s news confirms reports of a funding round based on SEC filings.
In some parts of the USA, “tapping the collective” can get you slapped with a harassment suit.
What’s so new or different about this site? “What is the NFL”? Wow. A real question at fl… what ever!
If Fluther can work the way it is mentioned, it is something different. Getting you the answers from knowledgeable resource will really be informative.
Good luck guys!
If you’d actually visited the site to see what that question was, you wouldn’t mock it. A question asking what “THE” NFL was would not fly on Fluther, it would be modded off before anyone saw it. This question was wondering what someone’s criminal record meant when it said NFL.
I have been on Fluther for over a year, and I can say that the moderation is second to none, this is how it distinguishes itself from the myriad of other Q&A sites on there. By and large, this collective draws extremely diverse and intelligent people who like to share their experiences and knowledge. Unlike some sites where you might see “who is your favorite Jonas Brother” about 3 times a day, poll type questions are not allowed, people are expected to meet very high quality standards in crafting their questions. As for the answers, anything goes, but they do have the expectation of at least one serious answer before people start to crack jokes. And the site is free from censorship, they do ask that you label content that is not safe for work, and they do not allow personal attacks and name calling.
What you get with Fluther is really a much higher caliber question than you’d normally get, and a base crowd who can provide far more content in their answers than in most other sites.
In short, don’t mock it unless you’ve tried it, and don’t write it off because YOU didn’t take the time to understand the question that was asked.
I tried it, and while I think it’s relatively nicely designed, I’m having a hard time telling it apart from the dozen other Q&A sites that have been out there for years. 600k uniques isn’t a bad start, esp if that’s not paid for, and i did get responses to my test questions, but I’m still scratching my head.
Ask that question on Fluther.
Congrats to Ben and the team. It’s a nice product and they certainly have managed to put together a solid group of investors.
The only relative problem I see with this startup is people using it, who are not tech enough to search for their own answers on the internet are probably going to have a major problem spelling and pronouncing “Fluther”
I’m a Fluther user and I love it. Congrats to Ben and Andrew for the round of funding.
Congrats Andrew & Ben!
Fluther is a great example of a start-up with a devoted community, insightful co-founders, and slick development/design. Way to go guys!
Hasn’t this been done, like a million times, over and over, including by Yahoo. Oh well, what do I know. Those smart VCs are all over this like white on rice!
/Ira
So true!
oh i get it!
it’s a *GREEN* play because they recycled the idea.
answers.com
answers.yahoo.com
answers.google.com
and on and on….
This is very interesting, does anyone know who the management is? We do a very similar thing with finance questions-and-answers, we however don’t want to be all things to all people. We want to be a finance resource to young professionals.
Well, maybe the secret sauce is in their heuristics to funnel questions to the people most likely to be able to answer them as best as possible in the least amount of time. There would be a lot of value in achieving that better than any competitor. I just started to use it and the site looks good so far, although I cannot say much about the quality of answers yet. Offering an iPhone app is a really nice touch.
One incentive that could be worse considering is to compensate contributors on a long term basis only, e.g. yearly dividends based on quality and quantity. Then again, some people contribute only for the prestige or just the desire to help, not the money, so regular features on top contributors would be cool too.
Great implementation and good quality of questions/answers.
The 600K funding is probably based on further direction of the startup. For example, they may be planning to turn it into a sort of a search engine for factual answers (cha cha style).
The investment was in the team, I suppose. Look at the outstanding implementation.
I am a Fluther user, have been since the beginning of the year (2009).
There are some inherent differences to Fluther, as opposed to some other Q&A sites, for example, Yahoo! Answers or (the now departed) wis.dm. First and foremost, there are moderators, weeding out questions that are either spam, against site guidelines or even poorly worded. In the case of the last two, they’re shunted back to the asker for editing, and then reposted to the site. Similarly, the answers are monitored by a very vigilant group of volunteer moderators, who remove, again, spam, blatantly off-topic or vulgar answers and so on.
As for the above commenter who referred to the recent question “What is NFL?”, you need to click into the question, where a more detailed explanation is given. In that specific case, it was an abbreviation on a prison record, not the National Football League.
Thirdly, there is a real sense of community on Fluther. The founders participate regularly in the Q&A, members form friendships that extend BEYOND the site and so on.
I encourage everyone to take a look at the site, at the very least. Ben and Andrew (and the rest of the moderation crowd) are doing an excellent job.
Oh hey – it’s like Aardvark – but actually GOOD and not overhyped!
How is this different from yahoo answers and how are these guys planning to make money ?
They just made money. Now they’ll probably sell.
In services like this I usually read a lot of questions but just a few answers. The only one which works very well and I found useful is Yahoo Answer (IMHO).
That´s like the German http://www.gutefrage.net which is very succesful!
Didn’t Google close down their Google Answers service a few years ago..wasn’t that just like Fluther?
Love their explanation of how to pronouce their name “Fluther is pronounced /’flÊŒ ðɚ/” …right…so that expalins that!
Google Answers was a paid service. You had to pay to get an answer.
How is Fluther different from other Q&A websites?
http://www.flut...qampa-websites/
Whoa… I just jumped to to Fluther for a look and realized 20 minutes later that I was still there. They may need to roll out the red carpet for board meetings, but that site is too sticky for me. Pass.
Fluther is only like Yahoo! Answers or other Q&A sites in that they are all Q&A sites. The similarities end there.
For one, I really can’t stand Yahoo! Answers. I’ve rarely gotten good answers there and I rarely feel confident about the caliber of answers.
Fluther has an awesome community. It’s chock full of really smart people who know a lot about a wide range of things. Having moderators takes care of dumb questions/answers, vulgarity, personal attacks, etc. People on Fluther usually use good punctuation, grammar, and spelling. I usually feel pretty confident I’m getting good answers.
Fluther and Yahoo! Answers are like apples and oranges. Instead of worrying that Fluther is too like other sites, check it out! There’s a reason it’s becoming so popular.
Dear god that site is ugly. And what did they do, hack a pligg template?
Shocking…Yedda’s core offering was that they funneled questions to people based on topic.
The got aqcuired by AOL for $15-20 million (rumored…) raised $2.5 million…if the price rumor is real, it was the biggest Q&A acquisition ever.
*However*…given that not a single commentor here made a reference to their service…either the product didn’t work as billed, everybody who’s posting is ignorant and or an astroturfer…or has a really, really short attention span.
I’d agree with the ugly comments
but, they do focus well, our site has a ton more features than theirs…perhaps that’s where they excel…though moderating a site isn’t new. Every Q&A site has moderators (if you read Answerbag’s blog, for example, you’d see that) same with Blurtit…
o wait – did I just name drop every site in the category but mine? Yep.
Ah, well – I have a “hunch” that since every site in the category (read Answer corp’s SEC filings) is 100% dependent on SEO these guys will hit a hummer…I mean, home run. The fund raising is great link bait.
No, not _every_ Q&A site has moderators. Wis.dm didn’t. Askville’s were impotent, if they ever existed. Yahoo! Answers moderators must be busy making new smiley face icons.
Why would i read the blog of another Q&A site when i’ve found the best when out there?
I am a bit perplexed, in fact, as to why moderation is needed on a Q&A site. Surely, if it is possible to devise an algorithm that can assign knowledge weights to individuals for each individual area of knowledge (based on community feedback loop and so forth), it must be possible to devise a moderation algorithm that lets the community vote answers up and down or mark them as spam, while using the above mentioned weight to give more influence on the matter to whoever is considered more of an expert on the subject of the question (or based on the person’s history as a responsible member of the community, in the case of spam). I cannot imagine that in-house moderation would scale very long, although it is nice to know that it will give jobs to a slew of PhDs who are unable to find a job otherwise. And let us not even get into the issue of bias.
Anyway, I asked my first question and got many answers very fast, some of which were very interesting. There seems to be indeed a nascent sense of community on this site, and I will bookmark it and come back when I need it. Some people do not like the design, but I do. I think that it is friendly and quite readable. Can it be improved? Yeah, sure, everything can.
If you spent a month participating in say Amazon’s Askville, then a month participating in Fluther, you’d KNOW why a Q&A site needs moderation.
1) 90% of the questions the unwashed masses ask are stupid, ignorant, and often chock full of misspellings
2) a vast number of the answers one gets are unhelpful, resort to personal attacks and name calling and are often chock full of misspellings.
I’d consider it more quality control than moderation. No trolls, no spam, no people shouting you down if they don’t agree with you, no vapid questions about irrelevant pop culture…it’s a place where smart people can interact with other smart people on a truly intellectual level and come away with an enriching experience for everyone.
Another similar site that’s just starting to get some press is Bizmore. The difference there is that Bizmore is really geared towards small and mid-sized business users, so they’re trying to keep it very targeted and professionally focused.
I’ve found that when I’ve asked questions on more generic sites (Yahoo Answers and, I assume, Fluther), I get some good answers, but also get spam-ish replies and answers from kids.
Saw some press for Bizmore yesterday (http://www.inc....09/bizmore.html).
Of all the things these guys can invest in, they invest in this average shit. Although I like fluther, I’d think 2-3 techs in their dorm room could handle it without investment, and as a side project.
thought some of the angels listed for this company are smart people, now i know they are getting dumber day by day, seems like there aren’t many innovations happening in the valley!
thought some of the angels listed for this company are smart people, now i know they are getting dumber day by day, seems like there aren’t many innovations happening in the valley!
not sure who’s dumb, at least they’re smart enough to invest somewhere that people don’t post the same inane comment twice verbatim, 2 hours apart.
Fluther is not bad. Need some UI update, but the site works. Good advice on most of the topics. Don’t know how they’ll make money — just using ads won’t work in the long run. Just my 2 cents. I’m developing something similar as my pet project. It is http://www.howD...dYouSolveIt.com.
Interesting site branding. I think there is room for many Question and Answer type sites, but in my opinion you need to carve out some sort of niche. Yahoo can do an umbrella site because of their reach, but for the rest of us going narrow and deep is the way to go i.e. specialization.