Show HN: Throw – The new space for asking and answering questions anonymously (throwapp.com)
For the past year we’ve been working on this disruptive new thing. It’s about people, community, communication and truth.
Throw is the new space for asking and answering questions anonymously. We believe that in today’s world (both online and offline) content in communication exchanges is strongly influenced by the personas, profiles and façades people maintain/upkeep/safeguard socially, ideologically and on relationships.
From the way people post on Instagram the life they want others to believe they have, or the way people behave on thanksgiving with family, or at work, or with friends; on every social setting and interaction to some degree acting and behaving according to that setting and the people they interact with. These dynamics influence the content itself, as people don’t just respond to a question like computers do. What ends up happening is that the responder comes up with the answer by blending the possibly objective answer with feelings, setting, desires, commitments, ideologies, fears, insecurities, etc (social pressure or social agenda).
Something is missing between social media and the traditional Q&A…
Throw addresses this by creating a space free from this social agenda. Thus focusing strictly on the content exchanged and providing a safe, comfortable and unbiased space where people can ask and answer anything freely with no bias, fears or strings attached.
Not only may Throw be used for personal and private questions and answers. But the power of crowdsourcing allows for a great variety of use cases like market research, validation of content and ideas, trivia, and much more. Serious matters and also just for fun…
It’s a query marketplace which means that “throwers” (people who ask questions) pay a fee proportional to the answers they need and in turn “catchers” (who catch them and respond) get compensated. This way we guarantee every user gets as many responses as he/she needs.
As for dealing with anonymity, we have built a sophisticated moderation protocol to neutralize and quickly ban people that contribute negatively as it is a priority people feel safe and comfortable in this community.
We have worked very hard to create a delightful product and are currently very close to rolling out our app to the market.
If this is something that may be of your interest or you’d like to be one of the first to test it out, you may keep an eye for our launch and other news by subscribing to our waitlist. https://www.throwapp.com
Also, if you have questions there is additional information in the FAQs section on our web page that could be of help.
If you still haven't looked at our explainer video I encourage you to see it as it's quite fun and describes pretty well what we are doing. https://youtu.be/3f9RcVVpkNA
Finally, we really appreciate any feedback we can get (of any kind). So if there's anything you like, don't like, or any other thought about Throw, we'd love to hear about it! You may post a comment below or through the contact section on the web page.
Be curious and dare to know!
Thank you!
8 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 30.5 ms ] threadWhen joining the waitlist.
*Changed browser and it worked.
I must tell you that we have thought of this too. And even though I cannot tell you we have a perfect solution, we have made a conscious effort to solve it and the way we address it is the following.
Yes, there is a limitation for Text questions, so for complex questions that need extensive or technical context Throw as you suspect may not be the best tool to use (at least not at this stage, we have more plans for later on).
However, there are so many use cases that may not need as profound context but still some context.
And the way we have enhanced this is by providing flexibility using media formats.
The users will be able to mix and match Text, Image, Audio, Video, Poll, Multiple Question and more. As an example a voice note may be most appropriate to some user and context and the user may very effectively sum up question and context, for some other an image poll mar be very self explanatory and like this there are multiple combinations that can be used.
One other thing to keep in mind is that people today are more prepared and used to summarize in digital platforms.
Take Twitter, where it was first thought ridiculous to function with a 120 character limit (today 280) but people adapted and became more efficient at communicating certain types of ideas.
I hope you find this interesting and even thought answer may seem defensive, I really appreciate your honest feedback!