We have another entry into the surprisingly popular social “answers” space. This time it’s called Fluther. The first thing I have to say about it, is that it has one of the best logos I have seen in quite sometime.

Beyond that, it’s a pretty solid means of tapping the “collective”.

Fluther

Fluther’s premise is simple. You submit questions and you get answers. From what I can tell, the questions are screened for appropriateness and their is a rudimentary social network around it, complete with user profiles.

Things get interesting when you realize that you can answer these questions in real time with other users that are online. I did not get an opportunity to fully test this feature, but being able to chat about a problem in real time adds a new dimension to the increasingly dull social answers space.

As for the UI, it’s clean and to the point. The first thing you’ll notice is a box that lets you enter your question. Below that is a list of the most recent submissions. Click on any of them and you are taken to a page with the answers that have been submitted. My only problem with this entire ordeal was that the answers were placed below an Adsense unit, forcing me to scroll. While this might do something to increase the click thru rate and bring in a few extra pennies, it was sufficiently annoying that it could drive away more users than it is worth.

Overall I felt satisfied with the service, which considering the type of program it is, is saying quite a bit.

Web 2.0 Roundup

There are a few problems. I wasn’t able to find any really easy way to search through questions. There was a field for topics, and you could go through the list manually but if I was really seeking an “answer” to a problem then having a search bar would be really helpful.

Also, Fluther suffers from the same problem that all young social networks do — there are several questions that are completely unanswered. What they could do to help solve this problem is strengthen the community of experts. What I mean by that is that most people who answer questions on sites like these are experts in a small set of fields. If you added group functionality, it would not only solve the problem of search but also give people a reason to come back to “see the experts” in their area of interest.

What I love about this system is how easy it is to navigate, which is why I was surprised at how hard it was to find the “live discussion” area. It could be that there were no people logged in when I was testing the product out, but even so, if live discussions is going to be one of your major draws you should make it dead simple to find active threads.

Other than these minor gripes, I was surprised at how well put together the site was. It is certainly worth a look. The community seems small, but from what I can tell they are quite active.

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