How your Feedback helps

By Alison, Purchaser of Exotic Animals | Published: November 5, 2009

You may have noticed that we’re constantly soliciting your feedback here at Aardvark. This is because we strongly believe that Aardvark should be a user-driven company. After all, Aardvark wouldn’t work very well without you. (You can read more about our approach to design and development here.)

Fortunately, our users are *awesome* and help us a ton with this process. Every day we receive hundreds of pieces of feedback in our community forum, email inboxes, iPhone app, on our Facebook page and via Twitter.

So what happens with all this great insight?

Community Forum
Every time you write something in the community forum, we receive an email. This lets me know to stop by the forum and check out the new suggestions and comments. I try to reply to each post so you know we’re reading and considering everything you tell us. Every couple weeks, a team gets together to look at the top most requested features on the forum. We’ve made it a goal to always either be working on the most requested features, or have a legitimate reason why we can’t and pass this along to our users.

Email and iPhone Feedback
One of the most important parts of my job is tracking and responding to the feedback that our users send us directly. Much like in the community forum, we want to make sure that you know we’re getting your feedback, and also let you know what we’re working on. Additionally, it has been a great way to build relationships with our users and understand the aspects of Aardvark that are most important to them.

Long story short, email me or feedback@vark.com and I promise to write you back. If you email someone else on the team - no worries - your feedback is still forwarded along and tracked.

Twitter and Facebook
We use Twitter and Facebook for what we call ‘overheard’ feedback. We don’t just want to know what you’re telling us - we also want to know what you’re telling each other. I constantly have a Twitter stream open that shows me every time someone mentions Aardvark. As I read through them, I mark any tweets that I think the team would find interesting, and respond to anything that I can help with. You can also provide feedback or get help by tweeting to me directly (@AlisonatVark).

I’m on Facebook all day as well. (Woe is me, I know.) I’m constantly refreshing the page to see the content you share and to respond to feedback, questions and concerns…so be a pal and post more often, so I can spend more of my workday on Facebook… :)

How it all comes Together
As cool as it might be if I were the one-and-only all-knowing god of what people thought about Aardvark, that wouldn’t help very much as we build new features. In order to make sure everyone at Aardvark understands the perspectives of our users, I get together with the user research team once a week. We put together a document called the ‘Weekly Learnings’ which we send out to the entire Aardvark team. This includes the nice things people have said about us, the findings from any user tests, features requested by users (with direct quotes), feedback from employees, and the most relevant tweets from Twitter (positive and negative).  Then every Friday, the Aardvark team gets together and discusses these Learnings — and this is how we decide what things we want to prioritize to address next.

By now, you should know the request that comes next: Send us your feedback! Check out the community forum, shoot us an email, drop me a note on Twitter and/or stop by our Facebook page.

We really do love hearing what you think — all the positive and the negative — since what we do is driven by user input. Plus, if you don’t leave us feedback, I’m out of a job… :)

15 Comments

How we use AJAX in the all-new www.vark.com

By Remi, Ethologist | Published: October 29, 2009

Using Aardvark is a highly interactive experience — it’s about actively engaging in conversations with other people, not about passive consumption of content.  Using our IM, email, Twitter and iPhone interfaces, it’s easy to jump right in and start having conversations.

When we designed the new Aardvark website (launched 2 weeks ago!) we wanted to create an interface that was similarly engaging by being very interactive and highly responsive.  This post is about some of the technology we built to power the new web interface.  (This is more technical than most posts on the Aardvark blog, so apologies to all of the non-nerd readers out there…)

JSONH

Vark.com is a Ruby on Rails application that makes heavy use of client-side JavaScript (JS).  We wanted our Rails app to behave like a web service that only serves data and the JS to behave like a client that consumes data — instead of generating JavaScript server-side.

JSON is the obvious format to use when passing data between Rails and JS, but in Rails, the :json format is conventionally used to serve ActiveResource compatible output.   So we decided to use a new format and named it :jsonh (after “json+html”).

The :jsonh format is a regular JSON object with a consistent interface that exposes 3 fields: ’status’ (with the HTTP status code), ‘flash’ (with Rails flash messages) and ‘html’ (optional - with html needed for update on the client side).

For example, a typical response on a validation error could be:

{
 status : "422 Unprocessable Entity",
 flash : { errors:["Login/Password are invalid"] },
 html : "<form>....</form>",
}

varkify!

In the client-side JS we make use of the jQuery library.  But even with jQuery, implementing AJAX functionality tends to be repetitive — so we built functionality in between Ruby on Rails and jQuery to help us automate some of the AJAX patterns we use.  We call this set of functionality “VARKificiation”.

Here’s the core pattern we automate using VARKificiation: We have a form or a link and when a user clicks it, instead of reloading the page, we want the client-side JS to submit an AJAX request. Then based on the result of that request JS can decide to update some of the DOM, display a message, clear a form, etc…

Using VARKification, we can simply “varkify” a form.  varkify() will bind the “submit” or “click” event (depending if we apply it to a link or a form) — then when that “submit” or “click” event is triggered it will figure out the url, method and parameters to submit to the Rails app by looking at the DOM.  Once the request is complete it will run the callback passed.  The response is passed as a parameter:

$('form#new_session').varkify(function(json) {
  // when the request is complete
  ...
});

Putting it all together

So now, using :jsonh and VARKification, we can write this code:

$('form#new_session').varkify(function(json) {
 // when the request is complete
 if (json.success) {
   // if we received a 2xx status code, redirect
   window.location.href = json.location;
 } else {
   // if there was a validation error, reload the form
   $(this).html(json.html);
 };
});

varkify() will display the flash errors automatically and the callback lets us update the page according to the status code and html from the :jsonh response.

Since we isolate our JavaScript from our HTML code, when we update a piece of DOM that new code has no behaviors associated with it and we need to rebind them.  All we need to do is call the following helper in our view:

<% add_behaviors 'VARK.behaviors.signin_form()' %>

This will add one more element to our jsonh response, so behaviors can be loaded by varkify() with some eval() magic:

{
  status : "422 Unprocessable Entity",
  flash : { errors:["Login/Password are invalid"] },
  html : "<form>....</form>",
  behaviors: 'VARK.apply_behaviors(["VARK.behaviors.signin_form()"])'
}

Other patterns

In creating vark.com we codified many more patterns, and took advantage of the best that Rails and jQuery had to offer.  For instance, within the VARKify framework we can do things like prevent double-submits on forms, standardize the appearance of spinners in the UI, and lots more.

And now for the plug ;-) … If you’re interested in front-end engineering — or, for that matter, systems engineering, cloud computing, machine learning, or search algorithms — you should consider working with us to solve interesting problems.

8 Comments

Aardvark Featured at the Web 2.0 Summit

By Rob, Assistant Curator of Birds | Published: October 23, 2009

This past Wednesday, at the Web2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Social Search was the hot topic.

Photo by James Duncan Davidson

Photo by James Duncan Davidson

We were honored to be featured at the conference, testament to the growing influence that Aardvark has in the industry. We were in good company — the companies that were featured on Wednesday were Microsoft, the US Government (represented by the CTO of the United States), HP, Facebook, Aardvark, Google and MySpace. Very humbling… and very encouraging!

Everyone was talking about the various models of Social Search. It was clear that the intersection of search (people want to find information!) and social networks (people want information they trust!) is at the crux of the next generation of Internet experiences.

Max’s speech about Social Search set the stage for further discussion:

When you want to find information, there are two ways you do it: you can search for the information on the web, or you can ask someone you know. Generally the web is a great way to find answers to objective questions. By contrast, people have always been great at giving you subjective recommendations for travel tips, gift ideas, local activities, getting started on a project, and so forth.

And he explained why the time is right for Social Search today:

Web search engines emerged in the 1990s as a great way to find information when there was a critical mass of content online that could be indexed. Today, there is finally a critical mass of people online that can be indexed — and Aardvark is a great way to ask people questions in real-time.

This gets us incredibly jazzed here at Aardvark…
1. There’s so much more information in people’s heads than the fraction that is online; and
2. The average person in this room has tens of thousands of friends-of-friends, classmates, and coworkers. You could literally fill a stadium with that personal braintrust. With Aardvark you can get an answer on demand to the kind of subjective questions you can’t easily answer on the web from someone that has been picked for you from your network.

Five years ago, you couldn’t really take advantage of those incredibly valuable resources. But today, after years of explosive web 2.0 innovation, there is a critical mass of data about the people in your network that is available to 3rd parties through APIs.

Max also took the opportunity to give a status update on Aardvark, and where we’re heading:

To make sense of all this data — and analyze it in the moment for any query — is a web-scale search problem that we’re only starting to master. It’s taken our team of 20 engineers and machine-learning Ph.D.s two years to get here, and there’s absolutely no shortage of meaty problems to tackle ahead.

We reached a tipping point late this Summer where, due to scale and engineering improvements, the product really started humming. The path forward for us is now about incorporating more sources of profile and social graph data, and integrating with more web applications where people can ask and answer questions. Aardvark is ultimately about indexing and connecting people. All that incredibly rich real-time and real-world activity can be pulled together by Aardvark so that your questions get routed to the perfect person, and so that you get the questions you are most satisfied to answer. Increasingly, you can also give more direction to Aardvark and control most aspects of your experience as asker and answerer.

And to prove it, Max gave a quick live demo (exciting and scary!): From the stage, he asked a question about romantic restaurants in Boston… and got a great answer in 3 minutes :-)

We’re looking forward to the next step…

8 Comments

Aardvark launches Social Search on the Web!

By Rob, Assistant Curator of Birds | Published: October 14, 2009

We’re extremely excited to announce that Aardvark Social Search is now available on the web at www.vark.com!

Aardvark finds people, not web pages, to answer any question. At www.vark.com you can ask any question in plain English, and Aardvark will discover the perfect person in your network to answer. You’ll get their response in under 5 minutes!

This summer the Aardvark team has worked hard to make Aardvark available over email, Instant Messenger, Twitter, and the iPhone. Based on the popular success of these applications, we’re thrilled to launch Social Search on the web today.

Anyone can visit www.vark.com now to give it a try — Aardvark will work out-of-the-box, using your existing profile and social-network from Facebook or your email address book.

Aardvark is useful for the questions that come up every day where you want an answer from a real person:

  • Recommendations for local services (”Can anyone recommend a great moving company?”)
  • Book suggestions (”I’m just getting started with knitting, what’s a great how-to book to teach me the basics?”)
  • Travel tips (”Does anyone know of a great bed-and-breakfast along the coast between LA and San Diego?”)

There are now Aardvark users in over 100 countries who can answer questions about over 1 million topics. So go ahead and ask anything!

When you visit www.vark.com you can just type in your question:landing_for_blog

Aardvark will figure out what your question is about, and find the perfect person to answer:

asking_for_blog

When someone answers your question, you can have a quick followup conversation with them:

history_for_blog

You can also help other people in your network by answering their questions!

anwering_for_blog

As always, we’d love to hear what you think! Drop us a note in the comments or post any feedback in our community forum.

17 Comments

Using Aardvark at work - for work!

By Alison, Purchaser of Exotic Animals | Published: October 8, 2009

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Alison - the community manager here at Aardvark.

One of the great things about working at Aardvark is that it’s totally acceptable to begin planning my weekend during work hours - “My friends and I are going to Sonoma this weekend. Besides wine tasting, what else in the area should we check out?” :)

That aside, recently I have been amazed by how useful Aardvark is for work-related tasks.  There are parts of my job where I need help from very specific people, and this is where Aardvark really rocks.

Getting Press
Aardvark has been a great tool for both finding people to reach out to and discovering the best ways to do so. For example, when we were getting ready to release our iPhone app, we didn’t personally know many iPhone bloggers. I put together a list of interesting writers I came across on the Internet, but then reached out to iPhone fanatics to help round out my list: “Who are some of your favorite bloggers who cover iPhone apps? Who do you respect the most?” In two minutes, I had a list from a friend of my brother. When we were getting ready to put out our press release, I asked for tips from PR professionals: “What are some of the best ways to share a press release? I know we can pay to put it on the wire and attach it to emails to press, but are there any other tricks for getting it in front of people? What other distribution methods should I look at?”

Writing
Anyone who’s been on Aardvark a little while knows that I love to write and send emails. :)  I also find myself writing blog posts, press releases and many other assorted tidbits. Aardvark is a fantastic resource when I’m unsure about grammar rules, or even just want to find the best possible way to say something. For example, while we were doing the final edits on our iPhone app press release, I asked grammar experts, “The phrases: ‘I may be able to help’ vs. ‘I might be able to help’…Are both grammatically correct? Do they have different meanings? When do you use may vs. might in these situations?” Over the course of 11 minutes, I got 5 great answers not only about the actual grammatical significance of the two words, but also about what they implied to the individuals personally.

Engaging Aardvark Users
While the product does most of the work for us, we want to make sure we go the extra mile to engage users and make them really feel connected to Aardvark. We update our blog, post on our Facebook and tweet about great new features, but by no means are any of us experts on what is most helpful and interesting to our users. Whenever we try to ramp up our efforts, I turn to social media experts on Aardvark for advice. Just today I asked for tips on building and engaging our fanbase on Facebook. Five minutes later, I had a list of strategies that a fellow Stanford alum had found helpful. I also reach out to Internet junkies themselves: “What types of things are you interested in reading about on a company’s blog (assuming you like the service)? For example: new features, info relevant to the industry, things about how the company works internally, etc.” Now I have a whole list of fun topics to blog about…

Outside of the Office
One of the best parts of my job is that I get to get out of the office and socialize - sometimes it’s planning events for our users, other times it’s meeting other Silicon Valley mavens to exchange thoughts and ideas. Working in San Francisco is great because there are so many cool events going on all the time, but unfortunately there aren’t enough hours in the day to go to them all, so I turn to Aardvark users for advice: “There seem to be a lot of organizations out there to help support female entrepreneurs (ex. Women 2.0, Chicks who Click, Astia, etc.). In your opinion, which (if any) are helpful to be involved with? What are the main benefits besides networking?” When we had our first Aardvark meetup, we chose the format, location, and even area of the restaurant based on Aardvark recommendations.

In short, being able to use Aardvark at work has been like having thousands of experienced advisers waiting for me on instant messenger at all times. In fact, just writing this blog post, I fell a little more in love with Aardvark. :) I’d love to hear how other people use Aardvark at work - share an experience in the comments, or drop me a line via email, Twitter, or on our Facebook page.

5 Comments

The Real-Time People Web

By Damon, Lion Tamer | Published: September 30, 2009

In the past several months, there has been a surge of interest in the explosion of real-time information now available online.  With Facebook status updates and Tweets now ubiquitous, we have entered the era of the “real-time web”.  Everywhere from Mountain View to Paris, technologists and pundits are gathering (offline!) to ponder and promote it.  And even mainstream media, ranging from Wired to the New York Times, have noted that a fundamental shift in our information-seeking paradigm is taking place.

Simply put:  It is now possible to see what lots of people are talking about in real-time on the web.

But there’s another side to the real-time web phenomenon that we here at Aardvark think is even more powerful than this, a change of paradigm that is even more fundamental.

What really matters is the increased accessibility of people online, not just information online.

Why is this important?

To understand this, consider the difference between Web Search and Social Search.

With Web Search, it’s possible to find countless long-hidden facts and figures which [a small minority of] internet users have at some point published on the web:  just type in a few keywords, and a Web Search engine will return the top results from among the billions of pages that constitute the web.  That’s great for queries about objective information that isn’t particularly timely, and which doesn’t need to be personally or contextually relevant.

With Social Search, it’s possible to find a person who has the information you are looking for: just type in your question in natural language, and a Social Search engine will connect you to someone with the right knowledge and experience to answer your question.  You get an answer in a few minutes, and can have a quick back-and-forth conversation with the answerer if there’s something you’d like to follow up on.  That’s just what is needed for queries that have a subjective element, or when you want information first-hand from someone you can trust.

The key point here is that often what you’re after isn’t static content — rather, it’s an interaction with someone who can help.  With the Social Search paradigm, online content is used as just an index of what its author knows about; the engine uses this index to find the person you should connect with for your question.  This becomes pretty compelling if we remember that the amount of information in peoples’ heads positively dwarfs the amount of authored information online:  just think what a small fraction of everything you know you have published on the web.  Yet everyone (not just those who blog a lot) have knowledge and experience that is valuable to share.  By using the web as an index of people, Social Search lets you tap into absolutely anything that anyone knows… in the theoretical limit :-)

How does this relate to the Real-Time Web?

There are three touch points for Social Search in the new real-time information landscape:

  1. The index of people is always up-to-date

    What makes Social Search possible is the vast amount of profile and social graph data that people have online (since this is what the engine uses to figure out who would be a good match to answer a question).  With the real-time web, this information can stay up-to-date automatically, so that you can connect with other people to talk about your current experiences.

    For instance, at Aardvark, users can opt-in to having their profiles updated based upon their real-time activity.  (More on the various information extraction and machine learning algorithms we use to accomplish these feats in a future post.)

  2. More people are online more often

    In the real-time web era, people are increasingly available online:  they are on IM, they are on Facebook, they are Twittering, they are using their iPhones.  This means that a Social Search service like Aardvark can easily see who might be available to answer a question in the moment and reach out to them… on any of these platforms.

    If you want to tap into your extended social network — tens of thousands of friends-of-friends, school and work connections, and such — we’ve found that it’s useful to have a service play the role of social intermediary here.  (Read about our user experience research work here.)

  3. Filtered channels are high-value

    The flood of online and real-time data has quickly become overwhelming to most people.  If you broadcast a question out to your entire network, that’s a lot of spam you’re creating as you add to the din; and over time, as we waste peoples’ attention, they are less attentive to these noisy broadcast channels.

    The alternative is to submit your question to a Social Search engine:  it will choose the few people who are most likely to answer, and contact them directly; in essence, it provides a kind of filter for your network.  It’s clear in the feedback we’ve gotten from Aardvark users that people are grateful to have this more personalized filtered channel — and as a consequence, they are much more responsive and thoughtful when they do choose to answer a question.

Put all of this together, and the result is a completely different kind of experience than anything available before.  Real-time information hookups!  With people you trust! Satisfying for the asker, gratifying for the answerer!

And this isn’t some futuristic dream — it’s happening right now.  In the time it took you to read this piece, a huge variety of questions were answered on Aardvark, based on connections made from profile data.  People really like helping other people!

In sum, the Real-Time People Web is the way that the Real-Time Web becomes personal:  Because often you don’t just want to hear what people are saying — you want to hear what someone is saying to you.

14 Comments

Social Search arrives on your iPhone!

By Bob, Primate Handler | Published: September 15, 2009
We’re very excited to introduce the new Aardvark Mobile iPhone App!
As of this morning, Aardvark Mobile is available for free download in the iPhone App Store.
Aardvark Mobile is the future of Social Search: Ask any question (from anywhere), and get a *live* answer from someone in your social network in under 5 minutes!
Lots of great Aardvark questions come up everyday when you’re out and about.  With Aardvark Mobile, it’s now super-simple to get connected to a friend (or friend-of-friend) with the right knowledge and experience about…
  • Neighborhood places (”What fun bars downtown have outdoor seating?”)
  • Travel tips (”What are some day trips near Berlin that aren’t too touristy?”)
  • Entertainment (“Any recommendations for live music - indie rock, world music, whatever! - to check out tonight?”)
  • App recommendations (”What’s the best strategy game for my iPhone? Something less than $10″)
  • Or anything else
People love to help, so you get a personal response in minutes!

How it Works

Aardvark works the same way on the iPhone as it does over IM or email:
1. Ask your question in plain English, like you would to a friend.
aardvark_img1A list of your previous questions and answers…

2. Aardvark discovers someone who’s online now and can give you an answer right away.
aardvark_img4
You’ll get a PUSH notification with an answer within minutes.

3. You can also answer questions for your network!
aardvark_img2See open questions about topics you’re interested in.

Special Features

  • Built-in location detection
    Aardvark will find answerers in your neighborhood, automatically.
  • Language engine analyzes your question to find key topics
    Or you can select from a list.
  • Get notified when someone answers your question
    Or when there’s a question you can answer.
  • Connect to friends
    Using Facebook Connect, or email invites from your address book

  • Secret Aardvark Shake
    Find the screen where a little shake gives a surprise…


Thank You!

We’ve been working extremely hard on the Aardvark iPhone app for several months.  Ben Keighran and his team (Gene Tsai, Nick Maher, and Brad Robinson) deserve a special thank you here.  Ben is Aardvark’s lead advisor for mobile products, and he led the charge on the iPhone app, from the initial designs through the final implementation details.  Thanks guys!

Also a shout out to our friends at CarbonFive who helped us build the very first prototype of the iPhone app. As always, extremely valuable to have an early version that we can use to gather user feedback and learnings along the way. Thanks CarbonFive!

And I want to give a special thanks to all of our amazing users who volunteered to help us by testing early version and giving useful feedback along the way.  We absolutely could not have produced such a great app without your help — we’ve included a special “thank you” in the App itself :-)

Try it out and let us know what you think!

33 Comments

Special Guest Post: Michael Dearing on Integrity

By admin | Published: September 8, 2009

Sometimes individuals are described as having integrity. Usually that means her or his core values are tightly aligned with the big or small actions of daily living. Products can have integrity too. If you believe my definition of the term, integrity requires two things: (1) core values, and (2) consistent expression of those values in actions. In products as in people, (1) is rare; (1) and (2) together, even more so.

When I first met Max, Damon, Nathan and Rob, they painted a compelling picture of social search. They explained what motivated them: people crave input from other humans on simple questions where a “right answer” was a subjective concept. They went further – the social plumbing of the Web – IM, texting, a then-budding stream of status updates and tweets – could be knitted together in a new way to get answers to questions. It was a good presentation.

What I remember most, though, is the rough prototype of Aardvark. In the last ten years, I have seen thousands of demo prototypes or pitches for new products. Some prototypes are beautiful, but empty; they lack meaning, purpose or values. Others are hard to look at, but appealing because of what they stand for or what they aspire to do for users. Once in a while, I see an exceptional prototype based on inspiring values and executed in a beautiful way. Aardvark was one of those.

When Max and Damon asked me to write this, I looked back at my notes from that first meeting. A couple of scribbles stand out that reminded me of the core values I saw embedded in that early prototype. Scribbles from those notes (in bold) with some current thinking below them:

“Aardvark works hard.”

The premise behind this product is almost absurd: a machine can be trained to figure out a question’s topic, find someone competent to answer, interrupt that person on another’s behalf, collect a quality answer promptly, and return it in minutes. If you choose to believe in this ideal, and then decide to build it, Aardvark needs to work hard. It has to be accurate, fast, relentless, polite, and open to feedback. In the fine details of how it operates, it is all of these things.

“A[ardvark] = literally a buddy.”

You could imagine a presumptuous destination website or a walled-garden application as a container for Aardvark. But the belief that this was about human connection is expressed perfectly in the primary user experience: Aardvark is one of your buddies in IM / chat. In fact, it’s probably the first on the list (clever founders named it Aardvark for a reason). To use Aardvark, you open a chat and type a question.  If it’s a channel between people, it should live where people connect. It should build on existing social behavior and norms. It does, and it is.

“Premise = the answer is out there – how optimistic!”

Are there really people who will answer and say something useful? Aardvark says, “YES!” This optimism is rare. The founding team believed great experiences happen easily between humans in the context of a friendly question on a topic of mutual interest. That optimism is palpable in the way Aardvark interacts with both Q’er and A’er. And it’s such a nice feeling to give and get answers, after a while the optimism in the product may just seep into the user.

“Premise = ‘truth’ can be a fxn of people’s experience and p.o.v.”

Wouldn’t you like to have the definitive encyclopedic answer, as written, edited and perpetually re-edited by a priesthood of experts on the topic? No? How about a list of urls rank-ordered by a magical machine that works with other machines to collect and organize the world’s information? No? You are not alone or weird. Sometimes a perfectly true and useful answer comes from a friend who simply has experience and a point of view. Answers from a friend are imperfect and subjective for sure. But a core Aardvark value says that’s perfectly OK because they can still be true and useful. The experience doesn’t apologize for that premise; it celebrates it.

I don’t want to be all rainbows and unicorns. There were multiple “WTFs?” in my notes too, but I left those out of this post. :-) I still have a lot of questions and I know that Aardvark will never be a perfect or finished product. It is a perpetual prototype.

In the meantime, Aardvark is on a worthy mission: keep human connections alive and well in the business of search. But beyond the mission, Aardvark has a special integrity. There is a deep, clear connection between Aardvark’s core values – hard work, human connections, optimism, truth – and the fine details of what it does and how it works. That’s rare and I love it. I hope you use it more every day and that you tell many people to use it too. It gets better the more we all use it.

**

Michael Dearing is the founder of Harrison Metal Capital. He teaches product design and entrepreneurship at Stanford University’s School of Engineering. Michael is an investor in Aardvark.

7 Comments

Amazing Aardvark Features!

By Alison, Purchaser of Exotic Animals | Published: September 4, 2009

Here at Aardvark, we’re *obsessed* with user feedback - in case you haven’t already noticed from our emails, community forum, Facebook, Twitter… :)

This means that we end up building tons of handy features that you all ask for. Since there are now a lot of cool things you can do on Aardvark, I want to go over some of the most helpful in case you’ve missed them.

When you’re asking a question….

  • ‘resubmit’: While most Aardvark questions get great answers, sometimes you want to know more or hear another opinion. Any time you want another response, just type ‘resubmit’. You can also resubmit a question from the History tab on the website (http://vark.com/history) - and even tell us how many more answers you’d like!
  • ‘thanks!’: One of the best ways to ensure that people give great answers is to let them know you appreciate their help. Type ‘thanks!’ after you receive a response to automatically send a thank you to the answerer; or type their name followed by your message to send a personal note or follow-up message (e.g., “Alison: Thanks! Your answer saved me a ton of time!”).
  • ‘train’: Was the answer you received helpful? Let Aardvark know! You can type ‘train’ after you receive an answer to provide Aardvark with feedback. Aardvark will use this when deciding whom to send your questions to in the future. (The person you are talking with won’t see this feedback - it’s just for Aardvark.)

When you receive a question…

  • ‘tag’: Have you ever received a question about python programming that’s labeled *reptiles*? Aardvark’s smart, but it isn’t perfect (yet!). Help us send the question to the right person by telling Aardvark a better topic. Just type ‘tag:’ followed by a new subject (e.g., “tag: python programming”).
  • ‘refer’: Can’t answer but know someone who can? Send the question their way! Just type ‘refer:’ followed by the person’s name – or email address if they’re not on Aardvark - and they can go to a customized web page to try to answer.
  • Your Settings: Want more questions? Fewer? Want Aardvark to only contact you at certain times? Let Aardvark know! Go to the Settings page (http://vark.com/profile/settings) to tell Aardvark when, how, and how often to contact you.

Whenever you want…

  • ’share’: Now when you have an awesome conversation on Aardvark, you can share it with your friends! Just type ‘share’ at any point in the conversation to get a share-able link to the transcript. Or click the ‘share this transcript’ link in your question history, where you can post directly to Facebook or Twitter. This is especially great when you learn something cool, receive a fun question or are making plans with other people.
  • Your Network: See who’s answering your questions! Check out our brand new Network page (http://vark.com/network) to see your friends, friends-of-friends and fellow group members – and what they can answer questions about. (You can also find out how you’re connected to someone you’re talking to over IM by typing ‘who’.)
  • ‘invite’: Want more people in your network? Aardvark works best when you’re connected to your friends! Go to http://vark.com/invites to find out which of your Facebook friends and email contacts are already on Aardvark and invite more folks to join your network.

As always, we’d love to hear what other features would maker Aardvark even better. Let us know by posting and voting in our community forum: http://vark.com/community

5 Comments

Feature Update: Share your questions and answers with friends!

By Nick, Zoo Horticulturist | Published: August 21, 2009

What we heard from you

“I got a great answer on Aardvark yesterday and there was no way easy way to just click and forward it to my friends.”

“It’s always fun to bring my friends over to see a conversation on my computer… I wish that was easier.”

“It’s a bit of a pain to have to take a screenshot of a conversation just to tweet about a hilarious exchange.”

(See the suggestions on our Community Feedback Forum)

What we did

Now you can type ’share’ after getting an answer (or giving an answer), and Aardvark will give you a custom link to the conversation that you can send to your friends.

Aardvark conversations are not published automatically — people will only be able to see your conversation if you send them the special link.

Here’s what a conversation looks like when you share it with friends: http://vark.com/t/ba5583

share_screenshot

You can send the link to anyone, even friends who aren’t yet on Aardvark.

You can also ’share’ a conversation from the website — just visit your history and click on any conversation, and you’ll see a new option to share that page.

Try it out now and share some of your favorite conversations… and post them in the comments here.

Then let us know what you think!

9 Comments