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Look Out Quora, InboxQ (YC W10) Takes Q&A Off-Site And Onto Twitter

45 points by clay 16y ago

immad 16y ago
Cool, but why isn't it a standalone website instead of an addon?
- answerly 16y ago
  Thanks! The feedback we got early on from potential customers was that they loved the idea of sourcing questions from Twitter. But, they didn't want another place to login to access Twitter data. So, we figured a browser app was a good first step since its persistent and didn't require constant monitoring. There will be a full web app in the future.
tudorachim 16y ago
This is intended for one-off questions that can be answered in 140 characters; the markets couldn't be more different.
- mrtron 16y ago
  The title of Quora questions are usually that length. The tweet + link works well for many sharing situations.
- dasil003 16y ago
  I think TechCrunch just threw that in there to meet their Quora quota.
nika 16y ago
I sometimes "just don't get it" so don't take this as a flame. But who is the target audience here? Regular consumers, or businesses? In the article the example is given of best buy trying to provide support, presumably for random people. How many of those people are actually going to be responsive? How many of the questions people ask are going to be ones that you can answer? Seems like a lot of effort, for a low return... I mean here's the funnel as I see it: A. People who ask questions somewhat relevant to best buy products. B. People who see the answer. C. People who then remember best buy in a positive light. D. People who then decide to visit a best buy E. People who then actually buy something at best buy on their visit. It is very hard to track B-E, and E could happen 6 months to a year later. I'm not sure how you make money by selling people a tool to let them maybe get a fraction of a percentage of people to buy something from you within the next 24 months. But, usually when I'm this confused, it means I'm missing something extremely obvious.
- answerly 16y ago
  Great questions. Our thesis here is that Twitter is a major channel for businesses to interact with existing and potential customers and is only going to get bigger. Big companies are already deploying lots of resources in an attempt to find high quality engagement opportunities on Twitter. For example Microsoft employs a whole team of support folks looking for xbox related questions and making sure they get satisfactory answers. Most companies aren't Microsoft and can't afford that type of resource outlay, but will also want to take advantage of this channel. We hope that InboxQ will be a tool that helps them do that efficiently. Ultimately, our goal is to help reduce the transactional friction on the channel as a whole (ie the funnel you detailed above). This is the first step towards that goal. Hope this helps answer some of your questions.
  - nika 16y ago
    Can't beat a major corporation already spending money doing what your tool makes easy for validation. Glad to hear. I think that there's an opportunity for the response to have a tiny URL that leads the customer to a site which might make tracking their process thru the funnel easier. And of course, it is probably a very different experience for an online retailer (Even someone like microsoft or apple who sells online) and I was just getting hung up on best buy (being bricks and mortar oriented... though they do sell online too.) Anyway, thanks for answering!
    - answerly 16y ago
      Thanks for asking! I agree with you. I think there will ultimately be different variations of the product based on the goals/objectives of the business. Our goal at this stage was to put enough structure around the product that it would be useful, but also make it accessible enough that lots of different types of users could get value out of it. We'll move in the direction(s) that users point us in.
jdp23 16y ago
It's certainly an interesting direction. I did an experiment last week asking the same question on Quora and on Twitter and the results were pretty astonishing -- Twitter rocked. Check out http://storify.com/jdp23/what-are-best-privacy-practives-for-startups http://storify.com/jdp23/what-are-best-privacy-practives-for...; the first answer is Quora, the rest is Twitter.
guynamedloren 16y ago
I am extremely confused with the company/product situation here. Honest questions: Is InboxQ a company, or is it a product of another company? Is Answerly a company? What is Queryable Corp? Which company/product actually got funded by Y-Combinator? According to TechCrunch, Answerly is a company that built InboxQ (product), but the InboxQ website leads me to believe that it is a company in and of itself, while the Answerly website doesn't mention InboxQ once. Neither Answerly nor InboxQ about pages mention Queryable Corp, though this mysterious company sits in the footer of both. When I discover a new tool, I like to learn about the people/company that are behind it, so please make this a bit more clear.
- aepstein 16y ago
  They're all the same people/team. A rose by any other name...
- answerly 16y ago
  Sorry about the confusion! Queryable, Corp. is the corporate entity that we set up when we founded the company. Answerly.com was our first consumer product. We've always been known to our investors, partners, vendors as Answerly because that was the consumer facing piece. We've stopped actively developing the Answerly.com q&a search engine and are focusing all of our time on InboxQ now. It is the exact same team, same corporate entity and much of the same core tech. Hope this clears things up a bit. If you have any questions, just let me know.

45 points by clay 16y ago

immad 16y ago

Cool, but why isn't it a standalone website instead of an addon?

answerly 16y ago
Thanks! The feedback we got early on from potential customers was that they loved the idea of sourcing questions from Twitter. But, they didn't want another place to login to access Twitter data. So, we figured a browser app was a good first step since its persistent and didn't require constant monitoring. There will be a full web app in the future.

tudorachim 16y ago

This is intended for one-off questions that can be answered in 140 characters; the markets couldn't be more different.

mrtron 16y ago
The title of Quora questions are usually that length. The tweet + link works well for many sharing situations.
dasil003 16y ago
I think TechCrunch just threw that in there to meet their Quora quota.

nika 16y ago

I sometimes "just don't get it" so don't take this as a flame. But who is the target audience here? Regular consumers, or businesses? In the article the example is given of best buy trying to provide support, presumably for random people. How many of those people are actually going to be responsive? How many of the questions people ask are going to be ones that you can answer? Seems like a lot of effort, for a low return... I mean here's the funnel as I see it: A. People who ask questions somewhat relevant to best buy products. B. People who see the answer. C. People who then remember best buy in a positive light. D. People who then decide to visit a best buy E. People who then actually buy something at best buy on their visit. It is very hard to track B-E, and E could happen 6 months to a year later. I'm not sure how you make money by selling people a tool to let them maybe get a fraction of a percentage of people to buy something from you within the next 24 months. But, usually when I'm this confused, it means I'm missing something extremely obvious.

answerly 16y ago
Great questions. Our thesis here is that Twitter is a major channel for businesses to interact with existing and potential customers and is only going to get bigger. Big companies are already deploying lots of resources in an attempt to find high quality engagement opportunities on Twitter. For example Microsoft employs a whole team of support folks looking for xbox related questions and making sure they get satisfactory answers. Most companies aren't Microsoft and can't afford that type of resource outlay, but will also want to take advantage of this channel. We hope that InboxQ will be a tool that helps them do that efficiently. Ultimately, our goal is to help reduce the transactional friction on the channel as a whole (ie the funnel you detailed above). This is the first step towards that goal. Hope this helps answer some of your questions.
- nika 16y ago
  Can't beat a major corporation already spending money doing what your tool makes easy for validation. Glad to hear. I think that there's an opportunity for the response to have a tiny URL that leads the customer to a site which might make tracking their process thru the funnel easier. And of course, it is probably a very different experience for an online retailer (Even someone like microsoft or apple who sells online) and I was just getting hung up on best buy (being bricks and mortar oriented... though they do sell online too.) Anyway, thanks for answering!
  - answerly 16y ago
    Thanks for asking! I agree with you. I think there will ultimately be different variations of the product based on the goals/objectives of the business. Our goal at this stage was to put enough structure around the product that it would be useful, but also make it accessible enough that lots of different types of users could get value out of it. We'll move in the direction(s) that users point us in.

jdp23 16y ago

It's certainly an interesting direction. I did an experiment last week asking the same question on Quora and on Twitter and the results were pretty astonishing -- Twitter rocked. Check out http://storify.com/jdp23/what-are-best-privacy-practives-for-startups http://storify.com/jdp23/what-are-best-privacy-practives-for...; the first answer is Quora, the rest is Twitter.

guynamedloren 16y ago

I am extremely confused with the company/product situation here. Honest questions: Is InboxQ a company, or is it a product of another company? Is Answerly a company? What is Queryable Corp? Which company/product actually got funded by Y-Combinator? According to TechCrunch, Answerly is a company that built InboxQ (product), but the InboxQ website leads me to believe that it is a company in and of itself, while the Answerly website doesn't mention InboxQ once. Neither Answerly nor InboxQ about pages mention Queryable Corp, though this mysterious company sits in the footer of both. When I discover a new tool, I like to learn about the people/company that are behind it, so please make this a bit more clear.

aepstein 16y ago
They're all the same people/team. A rose by any other name...
answerly 16y ago
Sorry about the confusion! Queryable, Corp. is the corporate entity that we set up when we founded the company. Answerly.com was our first consumer product. We've always been known to our investors, partners, vendors as Answerly because that was the consumer facing piece. We've stopped actively developing the Answerly.com q&a search engine and are focusing all of our time on InboxQ now. It is the exact same team, same corporate entity and much of the same core tech. Hope this clears things up a bit. If you have any questions, just let me know.