The awkward, redundant writing really doesn't help.
I think I understand what it does, I'm just not quite sure why. Their example use case of "what is this?" with a picture is handled pretty well by Twitter or Reddit if the object is at all interesting or unusual.
And I think that it works exactly like Aardvark did. Strange stuff. I don't think that this could be useful, since hard questions will be unanswered, and easy questions shouldn't be handled by humans either. So I guess this kind of application shouldn't be really used, and instead we would need large, compact databases, where we can store and query quality knowledge.
No offense intended, but this is a pretty useless title.
I'm sure the name is cute and easy to remember, but if there's no other info, gives me little reason to give it a second thought. (My first thought was it was some sort of a social network surrounding Candy Crush)
HN guidelines dictate that a post take its title from the linked article. And given that the linked article in this case was a blog post on the website for the app in question, it does make a little sense, doesn't it?
What if your friends are bumbling idiots or sarcastic bastards? I can already see it now "Hey guys, what are these two round concrete mounds near the ocean?" friends: "Huge tits? idk wtf, google it".
From the video it seems like it's a social network for questions.
Sorry for the negativity, but I can't see how this would work. It suffers from the same problem as every social network does, people need to be on it. If I want to get responses from my friends instead of just googling it, I go to my biggest social network Facebook to get those. I just don't see any value in this, it doesn't solve a problem any better than the current alternatives do.
From the page: "Jelly works with your existing social networks."
My understanding was that it works as an addon to facebook or twitter or whatever. Maybe one of the creators is floating around here and can clear this up.
Seems like the landing page is full of fluff. All I see are feel good sentences about helping each other, Albert Einstein, etc.
The big down side is this: "“What’s this?” That query is submitted to some people in your network who also have Jelly".
I have +400 friends on Facebook. Out of those, maybe 3 will install Jelly to try it out. Even with taking friends-of-friends taken in to consideration, it's just a very limited set of people. Would I really want to use this app to post a question that I can probably find answer just by looking a map, doing a google search or posting to Facebook/Twitter?
I'm following a lot of Twitter and other SF tech people on Twitter, and I had tons of questions waiting. Maybe it will stick for a some people, but indeed, I don't think most people have enough questions to check this kind of app often.
Unless I 100% own my 'answers' and my social network won't be sold, I won't use this.
I see there being value as an open source project, but if this is just a way to monetize and mine me and my friend's opinions then jelly can go jump in a lake.
No, this is not the expectation at all. Software developers should be paid for their work, but (sorry Hacker News) of all the popular funding models "VC-funded free service"(1) is the most hostile towards its users.
Terms can be drawn up so that you 100% own the content, but you grant the site a license to display your content on their site alone (and possibly indicate it must be only shown in original context, their search results, etc)
This allows full intended use but not ability to sell your answers to marketers, repackage as a book, etc.
Or they could go entirely in the other direction, and make all content on their site Creative Commons.
When you give advice in person, do you establish a contract with the person you're talking to that establishes control over the information you just shared?
I'm being a bit facetious but unless the things you are answering are things that only you know the answer to, it's a bit silly to demand some sort of ownership over what usually amounts to basic knowledge.
Clearly, an aversion to mining in general is a fair argument against, but even if it were open source, third parties would mine it and use it for their own purposes, at least when you go directly with a company like this, they are beholden to their terms of service, and privacy policies, which I am sure is no consolation :)
This is a good idea. I would just like to be able to ask questions without using the camera, and to have a favorites list that would make it easier to email or text the URL to the question.
Honest review of the video: very boring, cliché and didn't convince me to download the app after watching it. I wasn't sure wether I should post this or not (sorry for being negative) but I guess it's better than no feedback.
From a product use case perspective, Jelly is like Aardvark for mobile. Aardvark was a bit early in terms of leveraging the various social networks and did not have mobile at its heart. I was an active use of aardvark and was really disappointed when Google shut it down. Heres hoping this product takes social/mobile Q&A forward.
Agreed, clearest comparison. When Aardvark worked it really was great, and I would imagine that one of the biggest usecases for a product like this is asking questions in a new location so a mobile-first approach makes a lot of sense.
I was quite distracted by the "Murder she wrote" motif which kicks in at 0:23 on the video.
What pain point is this solving? I can see the usefulness of the photo of the Spire example, but as for traffic / most other real time issues, FB and Twitter work for those.
More than anything else, I want to see one of the developers using their own product and being passionate about it. Instead, it feels like they're pitching me on an idea - which I can't for the life of me see the point of.
Facebook had a very similar product launch in 2010 called "Questions." It not only distributed to your friends, but actually used graph data to surface to niche experts in the space of the question (similar to quora). That product flopped around for about a couple years before it was killed due to lack of valuable engagement.
I agree with what Biz is saying - "knowledge is very different from information." But I think the problem is that a lot of information already has knowledge layered on top of it in the form of indexed and searchable web objects, so for mundane questions like the example used, encouraging people to share the answer instead of retrieving it from an existing source is just wasted energy.
Looks nicely designed and maybe fun to use, but I can't imagine (and the website certainly doesn't help one imagine) a reason for using this instead of Google other their one provided use case of taking a picture of some unknown object and asking the community what it is.
Even with that, you could just post that photo and question directly to facebook, thereby cutting out this app which seems to serve as a middleman between a user and his or her already existing social networks.
So instead of asking my social networks by just asking them, they're trying to convince me I need another app installed to be able to do what I can already do?
This is a solution solving a non-existent problem.
In a way, sure, but not entirely. Jelly offers a way to forward questions along to others in your network, so it helps extend peoples' networks beyond their first degree connections. It is also purpose driven, your inquiries aren't mixed up with selfies and game announcements or family drama, presumably.
I ask people questions all the time on twitter, and frequently get useful answers. In turn I often RT my followers own questions if I don't know the answer.
I'm sure Jelly will have other benefits, but in this respect it just another unnecessary layer on top of twitter for me.
I think it's more direct than a retweet, but you're right that it's just another layer. That's not to say that a purpose driven layer can't be useful/grow into its own right. Twitter was just a layer on top of SMS at one point.
Some people create solutions for existing problems and others create new ways doing existing tasks.
This falls into the latter. Coming from Biz Stone you shouldn't be that surprised. I'd be shocked if his start up was solving a well known and critical pain that is immediately obvious.
I'm just not sure I have those types of questions -- ones more easily solved by my network than by Wiki or Quora. The video uses local art identification as an example, but I can think of a few different ways I'd solve that problem to have an answer in a minute or two.
Am I missing something? What problem does this solve?
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[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 373 ms ] threadI think I understand what it does, I'm just not quite sure why. Their example use case of "what is this?" with a picture is handled pretty well by Twitter or Reddit if the object is at all interesting or unusual.
I'm sure the name is cute and easy to remember, but if there's no other info, gives me little reason to give it a second thought. (My first thought was it was some sort of a social network surrounding Candy Crush)
I'm sure you're referring to this guideline: "Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait."
I think that if the title is so minimal as it begs you to click to have a clue what it might be, that could be construed as linkbait.
[0]: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/jell
Sorry for the negativity, but I can't see how this would work. It suffers from the same problem as every social network does, people need to be on it. If I want to get responses from my friends instead of just googling it, I go to my biggest social network Facebook to get those. I just don't see any value in this, it doesn't solve a problem any better than the current alternatives do.
My understanding was that it works as an addon to facebook or twitter or whatever. Maybe one of the creators is floating around here and can clear this up.
EDIT: The app uses friends of friends on Facebook, and also the Twitter Followings of your Facebook Friends.
The big down side is this: "“What’s this?” That query is submitted to some people in your network who also have Jelly".
I have +400 friends on Facebook. Out of those, maybe 3 will install Jelly to try it out. Even with taking friends-of-friends taken in to consideration, it's just a very limited set of people. Would I really want to use this app to post a question that I can probably find answer just by looking a map, doing a google search or posting to Facebook/Twitter?
What a silly world these people live in.
I see there being value as an open source project, but if this is just a way to monetize and mine me and my friend's opinions then jelly can go jump in a lake.
1 http://dominictarr.com/post/71958587606/some-thoughts-on-the...
This allows full intended use but not ability to sell your answers to marketers, repackage as a book, etc.
Or they could go entirely in the other direction, and make all content on their site Creative Commons.
I'm being a bit facetious but unless the things you are answering are things that only you know the answer to, it's a bit silly to demand some sort of ownership over what usually amounts to basic knowledge.
Clearly, an aversion to mining in general is a fair argument against, but even if it were open source, third parties would mine it and use it for their own purposes, at least when you go directly with a company like this, they are beholden to their terms of service, and privacy policies, which I am sure is no consolation :)
What pain point is this solving? I can see the usefulness of the photo of the Spire example, but as for traffic / most other real time issues, FB and Twitter work for those.
Reminds me a little of Kevin Rose's Oink: http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/14/2872172/oink-app-kevin-ros....
I agree with what Biz is saying - "knowledge is very different from information." But I think the problem is that a lot of information already has knowledge layered on top of it in the form of indexed and searchable web objects, so for mundane questions like the example used, encouraging people to share the answer instead of retrieving it from an existing source is just wasted energy.
Even with that, you could just post that photo and question directly to facebook, thereby cutting out this app which seems to serve as a middleman between a user and his or her already existing social networks.
This is a solution solving a non-existent problem.
I ask people questions all the time on twitter, and frequently get useful answers. In turn I often RT my followers own questions if I don't know the answer.
I'm sure Jelly will have other benefits, but in this respect it just another unnecessary layer on top of twitter for me.
This falls into the latter. Coming from Biz Stone you shouldn't be that surprised. I'd be shocked if his start up was solving a well known and critical pain that is immediately obvious.
http://jelly.co/about
Am I missing something? What problem does this solve?
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