Twitter founder Biz Stone has officially announced the launch of Jelly, a question-and-answer-based search engine for iOS and Android. It’s an app that lets you ask questions, push them out to your network, and get rapid responses. “If you have a question, there’s someone out there that knows the answer,” Stone says in a video accompanying the official blog post. The app places a heavy emphasis on visuals, encouraging users to post photos and ask questions about what they’re seeing.
Twitter founder Biz Stone launches Jelly, a social Q&A network for mobile
is the editor of the Platformer newsletter and cohost of the Hard Fork podcast.
In June, The Verge broke the news that Stone’s stealthy startup was focusing on Q&A. Jelly builds on work Stone did as an adviser to Fluther, a Q&A service whose team was acqui-hired by Twitter in 2010. Ben Finkel, who co-founded Fluther, co-founded Jelly with Stone. Both apps tap social networks to deliver quick answers to your questions. In a quick tour through the app, we found that after logging in through Facebook and Twitter, we saw questions about business, Xbox controllers, and where to vacation in Ireland. It’s a more personal, immediate take on Q&A than something like Quora, which was born on the desktop and encourages lengthier responses.
The trouble with most Q&A apps is that smart people tend not to sit around all day waiting for questions to answer — and the people who do tend to offer answers that are irrelevant, or worse. By tapping friend networks, Jelly is placing a bet on the altruistic side of human nature. But just ask Yahoo Answers — getting people to stop what they’re doing and offer a helpful response is often harder than it looks.
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