When you’re looking for simple objective facts — like the weather, or a movie time, or the population of a country — there are good solutions already available on the Internet, including Web Search, Wikipedia, etc.
Aardvark, on the other hand, is great for subjective questions and queries for more complex information. When you’re looking for a hotel in Chicago, or an HDTV recommendation, or a suggestion for a new mystery novel, the information you need is dependent on *taste* and *context*. The kind of hotel you’d like depends on why you’re travelling, who will be staying there, your style and price range, and all sorts of other considerations that you can easily talk about when you’re in a conversation with another person.
The fact that Aardvark is *live* (you usually get an answer in under 5 minutes) makes it great for other types of questions, too. It turns out that people use Aardvark for health tips, questions about current events, difficult research questions, help with starting a project, tech help and programming tips, tip-of-your-tongue memory aids… and also just for fun. Even though the answers to these questions often contain “objective” information, there is a lot of context involved in determining which objective information is appropriate for what the asker needs — and all that is needed is a few moments of help from someone with the right experience to make sense of it all.
We recently did an analysis of the types of questions people are asking Aardvark. It’s a bit skewed towards technology, given the technology-savvy audience that’s on Aardvark right now — but we’re also seeing clear trends of people coming back to Aardvark for travel help, product reviews, local tips, and entertainment suggestions.
Here’s a rough breakdown of the question topics people have asked about on Aardvark over the past month:
What do you think Aardvark is great for?
7 Comments
I’ve been asking all sorts of questions and have received a lot of good advice. I just asked a question about marketing that I tried to Google and couldn’t find the answer. I got it from Aardvark in 3 minutes. I’ve also asked technical questions and even some opinion stuff. I think I’ll be asking pretty much anything that I know would take a lot of research or time to find the answer on through a search engine.
Aardvark is also good for fact-based questions that you can’t search google for. For example, “what is the sample used in this song?” or “What song is used in commercial X?” You can’t type audio into Google; you need a human, for that. It’s also good when you know what you’re looking for, but can’t express it clearly: “What’s the name of the powdered candy that comes in a tube, and you squeeze out into your mouth?” Many questions that have an entirely factual answer just can’t yet be constructed in a way that google can understand.
(meta mode on) its the fun of answering I like, my recent question was someone else’s and what was important was not the answer accuracy rather the process that aardvark was part of - cooking is not recipes, it is techniques but more importantly its having a go and seeing what happens
I think vark is great and is really on to something. It is like an idea that I’ve had for awhile which is similar, but better, I think. Allow me to share:
Search engines are great, but they are limited in the kind of information they can provide, and, thankfully, vark recognizes and addresses this. But an application like vark could be taken much further. Why not create a knowledge market? That is, something like an ebay for knowledge?
For example, say I’m trying to learn PHP. I am working on a project, but I get stuck and need assistance. Ideally, I would like someone to help me, and I’m willing to pay them a certain amount per minute. As it is right now, there is no application which harnesses ambient human knowledge this way. Yes, I could ask a question using vark, but what if my needs were beyond the goodwill of someone volunteering their time on vark? How exactly would I know the person was qualified, etc.?
How many people in the world know PHP? How many can use a web platform to offer their services? What would the price of knowledge be if their were a global market for its particular, atomistic parts?
So, imagine an application that would bring all ambient human knowledge under one umbrella. Imagine help being facilitated by some kind of application like Webex or GoToMeeting. Imagine both the “video” and audio of such sessions being captured, tagged and archived to then comprise an expanding and freely searchable knowledge base. Imagine the archive being ad-sponsored. Imagine a portion of the revenue thus generated being split according to some formula between the person helping to solve the problem, and the person needing help with a problem. That is, imagine earning money simply by asking the right kinds of questions.
It is also easy to imagine building up a social network around this idea too as learning interests are the perfect pretext for meeting new people. I could go on, but hopefully you get the idea.
Do you need to have people in your Facebook network to have a questions answered? Our Facebook account is new so we don’t have anyone in our network yet. I’ve asked 2 questions since signing up and have not received a response back.
Search engines are great, but they are limited in the kind of information they can provide, and, thankfully, vark recognizes and addresses this. But an application like vark could be taken much further. Why not create a knowledge market? That is, something like an ebay for knowledge?
Another interesting feature could be saying “Done!” after one has gotten a couple answers to their question. Right now, I keep getting answers even if I got the answer that I needed. When I am not sure if a particular answer was what I needed, i would just keep them coming, else, Done! The answers that come later could just be archived in my profile online.
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[...] appears to be the type of information that must people are using Aardvark for. As Max Ventilla explained on the company blog: Aardvark is great for subjective questions and queries for more complex information. When [...]
[...] Aardvark is especially great for Posted by root 10 minutes ago (http://blog.vark.com) Or what song is used in commercial x you can 39 t type audio into google you need a human for that so imagine an application that would bring all ambient human knowledge under one umbrella post a comment click here to cancel reply powered by wordpress bui Discuss | Bury | News | Aardvark is especially great for [...]
[...] Aardvark is best for recommendations, tips, and the kind of question that you want a real person to answer. (See our recent blog post to read about the common uses of Aardvark.) [...]