Quora, Tunerfish, Hunch, and their obvious differences

As a part of my Personal Learning Project I investigated 3 newer social media websites. Each of these sites (Quora, Tunerfish, Hunch) were anticipated to be among the new trendy social media sites in 2011. After creating accounts on each site and monitoring conversations about each via Twitter I have noticed many strengths and weaknesses for each.

Without a doubt Quora has been the most useful of all three sites. It has the most active community, the most links on Twitter, and the most potential to do big things in the social media community. Quora is a question and answer websites, that unlike competitors, maintains a professional attitude. It was created by two former Facebook employees that are making major names for themselves in the social media community. Quora is also actively used by some other top names in social media such as Facebook's Dustin Moskovitz. It is very simple to get started in the Quora conversation by looking up what you are interested in. Because Quora is still building its community, some specific questions are not on the site. However, submitting your question is very simple. After submitting a question I received a response about a week later. The more users Quora attracts the shorter this turn around time will become.

One complaint I have about Quora is the feature that creates personal communication among users. It is simply unnecessary. I follow 14 people and 0 people follow me back. The people I follow do not contribute to my Quora experience, and my lack of followers do not hinder my Quora experience at all. From what I've gathered it doesn't seem to play a large roll in anyone's interaction with the site. For all intents and purposes, the ability to follow specific questions seems to suffice.

Tunerfish was my least favorite among these three sites. It is just useless. Like Twitter your home page is centered around a question that needs answering. In this case the question is "What are you watching?". After answering the question, then what? Depending on who you follow you might receive good recommendations of television shows. This is where I developed issues. I follow 13 people. When I began following certain people it was based on people with similar taste in television. These people were recommended to me via Tunerfish. The problem with this is, if I want to discover new television, how would I do that if the only people I interact with watch the same shows as me? Tunerfish would benefit by developing a suggestions aspect of the site, similarly to Netflix. Without that feature the site is pretty much useless. Once the initial question is answered, I have no reason to stay on the site longer than that. In my opinion, Tunerfish would be more successful as just an app and not a website attempting to do more than it actually does.

I love Hunch, the only problem is, I don't have time for it. Hunch is a brilliant website that recommends all sorts of things based on your responses to simple questions as well as your rankings of recommendations. The website gets to know you the more you use it and becomes more beneficial the longer you have your account. But unfortunately not a lot of us have time to just waste time on the internet. Hunch is the type of website you would play with on a lazy Sunday morning, or in between flights at an airport. You can so easily get lost clicking from recommendation to recommendation. Which means the website is fun and addicting, but few of us have time for another internet addiction. I could see Hunch being attractive to younger people, perhaps high school aged. These people have more time on their hands and could perhaps benefit from discovering new interests.

Since using Hunch the site has changed a bit. The most recent time I logged in, Hunch recommended that I begin following specific people with similar interests as me. Since doing so, my account has become more about giving other users suggestions, and less about receiving suggestions. I like this because I am still able to discover new products, while simultaneously becoming a more interactive user. I think this is a step in the right direction for the site.

Quora definitely came out on top among these sites. I firmly believe that we will be hearing a lot more about Quora in the near future. I can see it becoming comparable to major social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Linkedin. As for the other two I do not see as bright of a future. Hunch, more so than Tunerfish, has an addicting and fun foundation, I'm just concerned about another hour-killing website out there to distract me. Tunerfish needs to add more useful features if they want to be recognized as a major social media site. As they are now, Tunerfish won't be around long enough to make a splash in this seemingly endless sea of social media.

 

Tunerfish not catching on

I should begin by noting how badly I wanted to like Tunerfish.  It was an innovative (sort of) idea that was a combination of two of my favorite things, social media and television. The website has the glitz and glamour of a successful and fun social media website, but it is missing one very crucial aspect, the social part. Becoming a part of the established community has been difficult.

Other social networking communities I am currently a part of were almost effortlessly established. I haven't found that ease with Tunerfish. I do as I'm told and answer the simple "What are you watching?" question and it seems like I'm having a conversation with myself. I have yet to understand how community on Tunerfish is established.

I also do not understand the awards feature of Tunerfish. I currently have a Guppy Award and an Oscar Award. The Guppy award was completely a pity, thanks-for-signing-up, type of deal. The Oscar award I'm pretty sure is just a result of posting that I was indeed watching the Oscars. Apparently there 121 possible awards to win. But what do they even mean? If I have more awards will I connect with more users? What will earn me awards? None of this is clear. The awards component of this site seems useless and just clutters the site.

While I think overall the Tunerfish website is precious, I just don't see much of a future for a site like this. Once you post what you are watching, then what? There really isn't much offered on the site to keep you their longer than the 2 seconds it takes to post about what you are watching. It doesn't have that addictive pull that Twitter or Quora have.

Maybe there are components I am missing out on that make Tunerfish a site worth noting. My logic tells me however, that if someone fairly savvy in the social media department fails to understand all aspects of a site after 2 months of playing with it, then your site isn't as user friendly as it needs to be. Maybe that's the issue.  Either way, at this point in my exploration, I don't see Tunerfish causing any sort of ruckus in the social media world.

Life Lessons on Quora

So far Quora has been an interesting resource. It is incredibly easy to get lost on for hours as you research about things you don't necessarily need to know. Many of the questions I follow are media or communication related (or about Justin Bieber...). While these questions and their responses are interesting, it's the less serious questions I find myself being more concerned with. One of these questions being "What would you advise your (hypothetical) 22-year old college-grad child to do with their life?". 

The responses to this question have provided me with so much incredible (and free) advice. The respondents really took the time to write out lengthy paragraphs generally describing things they wish they had known. Some of the advice is specific like "don't work for a big organization" while other bits of advice are more general like "don't take things too seriously". 


I appreciate the unbiased nature of these responses. Because the people responding aren't advising one person in particular there is a hint of genuineness that is unparalleled by parents and peers. 


I'm not sure if free personal advice was an initial goal of Quora, but it certainly is a unique feature that transforms Quora into something more. Something truly useful.

Hunch Discusses Design Challenges and Opportunities with NYU ITP students

Chris Dixon, Hugo Liu, Christina Mercando speak to NYU ITP students about the development of Hunch.

If you have the time to watch this (it's almost an hour in length) it is a really interesting break down of how Hunch was developed, who's behind it, and basic design information for someone wanting to create a start up. Note their age, style, and intelligence it's fascinating to see people from your generation becoming leaders among technology.

A bunch about Hunch

As alluded in earlier posts I have an always expanding curiosity about emerging social media/social networking websites. In my further exploration of these trending sites I came across Hunch. Wikipedia describes Hunch as a collective intelligence decision-making system that uses decision trees to make decisions based on users' interest. In less-confusing terms, Hunch is website that gets to know its users through random questioning so that it is able to recommend sites tailored specifically to your interests.

To ease registration, Hunch gives you the option to sign into the website using your Twitter or Facebook accounts. I suppose this function is partially for ease of use as well as automatic promotion when people sync either of these pages with their Hunch accounts. Once you sign in you are then asked a series of seemingly random questions. Anything from "When you get home, where does your coat usually go?" to "Do you consider Russia to be a part of Europe?" The question/answer portion of the website continues for as long as you want, but the more questions you answer the better the site gets to know you. Once you've answered some questions and completed your profile you are ready to get started.

Hunch produces a list of suggested topics for you. This is when I was truly amazed by this site. The top suggestions Hunch produced were scarily congruent with my interests. It suggested things such as "Places to move" a subject I've only been interested in as graduation date draws closer. Other suggestions included "Going out ideas", "Cocktails", "Coen Brothers moves", and "Dog Breeds". You would think Hunch was connected to my Google searches, but playing on Hunch on several computers disproves this theory. The site's decision trees are just THAT good.

To truly utilize the site and have it tailored even more specifically to your likes you simply click on a topic and rate the site's suggestions on a 5 star scale ranging from "I hate this" to "I love this". (Hunch already has starred the degree to which they think you will like a suggestion, and 9 times out of 10 they're right. Creepy, I know.)

Rating each suggestion will only allow Hunch to get to know you better. The real usefulness of the website comes from clicking on a suggestion. For example under the suggested topic "Places to move" Maui was listed as a 5 star recommendation for me. Once I click on the recommendation a user generated list of pros and cons about Maui appears, as well as a list of other users who like Maui. It also allows you to submit any personal pros and cons, as well as a list of similar locations Hunch thinks you might find useful.

Hunch's ability to get to know its users gives browsing this site a personal feel. It eliminates all the clutter of a standard search and personalizes the web just for you. It isn't trying to sell you anything or persuade ideas in any way. It is simply an unbiased tool for learning more about things you are already interested in. Again this is another website that will have you clicking for hours so consider yourself warned.

Attention World: Meet Quora

A mere seven months ago the world was introduced to Quora and newest questions and answers website. Quora hosts an open questions and answers forum much like its main competitor Yahoo! Answers, but in a more professional way. Quora also gives users the ability to rank answers with an "upvote" or "downvote" option that organizes responses so that the most accurate, relevant and helpful responses appear on top of the less useful responses (think Digg). 

Quora was co-founded by Adam D'Angelo (a former Facebook employee) and Charlie Cheever. They decided to go forth with their creation of this website because they knew the potential of a question and answers site, but quickly realized that no one before them had done it quite right.

I learned about Quora when researching predicted social media trends for 2011. Nearly every online article I read mentioned Quora as the website to watch out for.

When I made my account and began playing with the website I was thoroughly impressed with the accuracy and seriousness of responses as well as the vast topics available for searching. On Quora you are able to submit questions and follow the responses, as well as just follow questions that interest you. Following questions means that Quora will notify you when a new answer to this question as been posted which allows you to continuously learn about a particular subject. I find this helpful because Quora allows you to gain many different perspectives on one particular issue.

As I mentioned before Quora's catalog of questions range from any array of questions you can come up with. I currently follow such diverse questions as "How much revenue does The Academy Awards generate?" as well as "Why is PBR considered a hipster beer?" While the answers to either of these questions won't change my life, they will provide me with interesting conversation starters and they will add to the seemingly endless amount of useless pop culture facts I have stored in my brain.

I've also noticed that Quora is a great outlet to discover new music. I follow the question "What are good songs to wake up to?" This question gets answered a lot and I've yet to dislike any song I've sampled from the list of responses.

Quora has a lot of promise in terms of a new highly addictive trending social media website. Much like Wikipedia I find myself beginning my search for a specific reason then, an hour later, after millions of clicks I am educating myself on a completely different topic.

I appreciate the community Quora creates as well as the level of professionalism it holds. Quora has very specific requirements for asking and answering questions and does a excellent job of making sure users are aware of their policies. This ensures that Quora remains tasteful and useful, unlike Yahoo! Answers.

Quora has an immense amount of potential and I am curious to watch to see if it can rise to level of other social media juggarnauts.