So one of my new favourite sites that I have discovered is Killerstartups, its basically a website that profiles all the various internet startups that obviously pop up daily. A lot of the startups it profiles, I can’t see a use for, and look like they’ll fizzle in a matter of months, but some really intrigue me, and its always cool to see sites like those grow.

One of the sites they profiled a few days ago is Ask 500 People. The concept of this site is simple, users from around the world vote their opinion on questions pose by other users and the site displays the results of that polling. Polling data is collected both from users of the website, and also from users across the web though their votes on websites that have installed a widget provided by Ask 500 People.

The website breaks down the votes on a elegant looking interface akin to a Google map with push pins. Each user whether at the site or elsewhere in the internet is represented by one of these push pins that is placed at their real life location on the map. The push pins are color coded to reflect which answer to the polling question the person selected. This data is updated in real time and is reflected on the map(which moves to center on the last vote) and also reflected on the right of the map through line bars and percentages. Users can also view the percentage/number results of the question broken down by country, as well as whether the votes came from the community or elsewhere on the web. The default question is completed at 100 people, with questions that are only to be answered by the community completed at 25 people.

The interface also has a place to comment and see who else is online on the website. There is the buddings of a social network with users able to upload pictures and have profiles, but interaction between users through profiles is limited at this point(there is no friending option). All the profiles really display right now is recent questions submitted and recent comments by the user.

This site is very interesting. The ability to quickly poll a group of people from around the world has many interesting applications. Obviously this isn’t statistically reliable polling by any stretch of the imagination, but it is an interesting social experiment nevertheless. As with all sites with user generated content, this site suffers from one extreme downfall. The questions posed by the users are only as high quality as the users of the site themselves wish them to be, or are capable of creating. Some example questions recently have included, “Q: For a roast dinner, which do you prefer? As: Roast Beef or Roast Lamb or Roast Chicken or Roast Pork” and “If you were to give money for charity, would you give it for children or old people? A: Children or Old people”

The site attempts to get around this issue by using a Digg-like voting system where questions are queued based on their number of votes. The next question is the question with the highest number of votes. All users can see the questions that currently have the most votes for them on the homepage of the site. Most of the question that appear on a quick browse through the recently asked questions list are fairly thought provoking and of high quality. That is not to say that there is not a fair share of bad apples, with one of the current upcoming quesion as of this writing being, “Who thinks Madonna is our generation’s John Lennon?”

Since the website is still in its infancy the community is small and therefore the number of questions is small, one can only expect higher quality questions as the site grows larger, with questions like the current question as of this writing a community question, “3 Truths, 1 lie: Which statement is NOT true about me?” This question again requiring 25 votes from the community has been the current question for around an hour with the site claiming 44 people currently logged on(it has 24 of the required 25 votes).

This does bring of questions of scalability. Presumably, once the site becomes more popular questions will be answered more quickly making it difficult for users of the site to necessarily answer questions before their brethren with faster internet connections, or those browsing the various sites with the Ask 500 People widget installed. This will most likely be alleviated by the eventual scaling up to 500 people, but even then if the site becomes wildly popular that may not even be enough(and a waste of their domain name).

Finally, the site has an interesting approach to monetization. The site owners plan on selling questions. Presumably, these premium questions will be a mixture of direct advertising and consumer surveying. One an example of something it will probably look like is one currently on the homepage which asks, “What is your opinion of the company LifeLock?” A question like this would allow a company to both gauge its appeal, and also to cause its name to become in the consciousness of consumers, who may look it up(as I did, its a company involved in identity theft prevention in case you were wondering). By making the answers, Positive, Negative, and Never heard of them they accomplish both of the aforementioned goals.

This monetization method is not without its flaws, however, as people may abandon the site if the feel that instead of answering questions of their peers they are being marketed to(much as Facebook’s new advertising strategy Beacon has been talked about in the press in recent days). The balance that Ask 500 People must strike is a delicate one if they wish to remain both profitable and interesting to people.

I am sure in time these issues will be sorted out. This site seems to hold a lot of promise, and is a very neat idea that I hope will catch on, assuming the quality of the questions remain high, and it does not become simply a form of market research with no benefit to those being marketed to.

Update: Added several recent screenshots.

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