Text-based Q&A keeps on coming, with yet another pivot into the space; this time by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone's Jelly.
The app, which is 3 months old, found little traction as a photo-based question-and-answer platform where users asked questions tied to specific photos.
Today, the redesigned app now allows for broader questions via text and map, in addition to those tied to a specific photo. The app's slogan is "let's help each other," and this updated interface is its next step towards that vision.
Here's how the addition of text and map-based questions looks in the app interface:
Jelly joins other startups such as Locish in the increasingly competitive mobile/local Q&A space.
The company sees itself as a future node for navigating the world via mobile:
Jelly is a human-powered discovery and search parsing engine driven by images, founded in April 2013 by Biz Stone and Ben Finkel. According to Biz Stone, the jellyfish was chosen to represent their product because it has a loose network of nerves that act as a “brain” similar to the way they envision loosely distributed networks of people coordinating via Jelly to help each other.
While Locish has raised $820k to tackle the concept, Jelly is likely significantly more well-funded as they've raised an undisclosed Series B round. Given Stone's prominence, this is a vertical that is poised to iterate through potential interfaces - only time will tell if mobile/local Q&A solves enough of a problem to gain real traction.