TryThis is a social recommendation engine. Now, before you get too put off, understand that as always it’s not what a product does but how well it does it. In this case, I would say that TryThis manages to provide an elegant alternative to services like Yahoo! Answers.

Try It

And you will probably like it. The interface is clean almost to the point of asceticism. There are three major navigation elements, “Ask for Recommendations,” “Give Recommendations,” and “Search Existing Stuff.” These buttons do exactly what you would expect, allowing you to source the great, wide expanse of the internet for opinions on everything ranging from what to do on a Saturday night to the best of Sci-Fi.

You can make suggestions, vote them up and leave random musings on an ad hoc comment wall. The best thing about this service is that 2 minutes after picking it up, I was absolutely certain about what I was doing. It was not so cluttered with features that I was left confused, a problem faced by many of these social recommendation services.

Try Not To…

Unfortunately, the news is not all good. The first problem with anyone trying to enter this space is that there is just so much competition. If you are not facing off against Yahoo! Answers in the “general questions” sector, then you are going up against the likes of Amazon in the product recommendation area. This isn’t even taking into account the half-dozen other services that want to be the Internet’s answer broker. What TryThis has going for it (other than a catchy URL) is that it is so simple to use that people may use it just because of the low barriers of entry.

Second, it is the question of critical mass. Until you attract a core group of users that are willing to field your questions, then it service amounts to little more than Forum wrapped in a social network. What TryThis would be smart to do is find a niche that no one is currently touching and then seed the conversation with answers around that topic. Maybe, they could take a geographic approach and provide answers to questions specific to particular cities.

Social answer services should act as a “distributed expert”. They work best when people can go to them and know that the answers that they receive are from people who know what they are talking about. One of the best ways to ensure that everyone is on the same page is to start out specialized and expand into related areas as your user base does. It would be really valuable to have a site where I could find the best hotel, night club or restaurant in a particular city from people who actually live there. I really don’t need that same site to be able to tell me what books I should pick up the next time I’m in Borders.

Web 2.0 Roundup

In short, TryThis is a great site to, well, try… It will only become better as the number of people in the system increases. The founders of the service would do well to keep in mind that all of he big players in this field are trying to be everything to everyone. It is very unlikely that you can go against them in the general “answers” field. You can, however, tap into a niche that has yet to be exploited and truly provide value to your users that way.

Sometimes it’s far better to innovate than try to butt heads with giants, a little food for thought.

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