Quick Pitch: Opinionaided polls a crowd to answer your questions.
Genius Idea: Making Q&A real time, social, opinion-based and addictive.
At some point after Quora launched in 2009, the Q&A concept moved from the realm of stodgy forums to burgeoning tech trend.
Approaches to dominating the advice space include Facebook's latest feature for polling your friends, location-based Q&A apps like Ditto and Localmind, anonymous Q&A app Formspring, and niche advice platforms for categories like fashion.
iPhone app Opinionaided's approach is visual, opinion-based and social. But its killer quality is that it's also highly addictive.
Users post photos, attach a yes-or-no question, decide whether to make it public, and tag it with a category. While they're waiting for responses, users can vote on other questions with a thumbs down or thumbs up (think Hot or Not). They also have the option to add a comment or share the question with friends, and they can respond to anyone who comments.
The most valuable characteristic of the app is its ready and assembled army of responders. Within two minutes, I had about 20 responses to both of the test questions I asked. CEO Dan Kurani says he believes the average number of responses to be between 30 and 100. Some of the people who commented on my question had answered more than 21,000 inquiries -- even though so far the only incentive to do so outside of killing time is a gold star given to top advisers.
An engaged userbase is quite an accomplishment for a startup that launched its current product less than a year ago. But once again, we arrive at the (literal) million-dollar question: "Can Opinionaided make money?"
Kurani, who raised a $1.2 million round earlier this year, says he hasn't nailed that part of the business down yet, despite exploring options involving professionals who want to use Opinionaided to showcase their expertise. So we posed the question to Opinionaided's users.
Only 10 people took me up on my question this time. But they weren't optimistic: Almost three quarters of respondents said no, Opinionaided would not be a money maker.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, mattjeacock
Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark
