Avanoo is a new website, currently in limited private beta, that aims to tap into the true wisdom of the crowd.
Avanoo incorporates a complex set of tools to bring about opinions and responses to offer a somewhat general approach of specific answers to larger questions. Users can present a question to the community and others can choose from the answers provided in order to participate in the overall discussion. Questions posed can include multimedia, such as images and video. Results provide a graphical representation of how others voted, and comments are displayed as responses to the initial topic of discussion.
Additional questions can be raised based on these responses. You can also break down these results even further, to show how demographics play into the discussion as well, from ethnicity to geographical location. Avanoo works as an exchange route though; you have to give up information about yourself in order to gain the same information from the community. In other words, you can't see how females voted on a particular question until you indicate your own gender. All those demographics are great for attracting advertisers as well.
Avanoo is an interesting format for an online community structured to tackle the philosophical questions of life. It's an unscientific approach to research and design, but can be helpful nonetheless for those that wish to set their own opinions against those of the community. In order to succeed in the way they see fit, Avanoo will have to reach critical mass. Such philosophical questions should be exportable to even larger communities. It would be nice to see them build out their community features as well; perhaps list the questions proposed by users on their profile pages, and garner more ways in which to facilitate communication between users.
