Have you seen those obnoxious commercials for KGB? That directory assistance/knowledge market company that I suspect spent oodles of cash securing their domain name? The concept is interesting: text a question, get an answer researched by a real person. Well, if the question is too difficult for their keyword search system, anyway. Neat idea though, right up until you get to the $0.99 price tag and realize you’d be better off Googling the answer for all the good it would do you.
Today I came across a web service called Aardvark, which one might define as a user-generated KGB; that is, it’s a community of users connected via web browsers, cell phones and instant messengers that define their own areas of expertise, and are automatically sent questions from other users that target those criteria. For example, earlier today I asked “What is a good, lightweight and free (open source preferred) FTP client for Windows?” and received 2 answers within a few minutes; one user recommended Mozilla FTP, and the other FileZilla. When the answers came in, I was notified via Google Talk on my Blackberry and PCs. Alternatively, I could have received notifications via SMS and email. Twitter notifications from the @vark account would be a nice touch, too.
The service is brilliant, and I really hope it gains popularity. The only real problem right now is the limited number of users participating (think Twitter back when it was “twttr”). On the other hand, as my buddy Tom pointed out, one has to wonder how scalable the platform behind it all is, and whether they’ll be able to meet the demand as the community grows. I wish them the best of luck with it.
If you’d like to try Aardvark, you can sign up using my referral link or from their site.
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