Twitter's Jelly App, What Is It?

On Tuesday January 7th, Twitter's cofounder Biz Stone has offically launched Jelly, a new question-and-answer-based app for Andriod and iOS. The purpose of this app is to allow you to ask questions, push them out to your network of friends, and get faster responses. In the offical blog post video, Stone says "If you have a question, there is someone out there that knows the answer." The new app is different in the way that it places a heavy emphais on visuals, encouraging people to share photos and respond to questions about what they are seeing. Connections from both the user's Facebook and Twitter accounts can then respond to the question through the app.

"In a world where 140 characters is considered a maximum length, a picture really is worth a thousand words," Stone wrote in a post on Jelly's blog. "Images are in the foreground of the Jelly experience because they add depth and context to any question."

So Should I Download Jelly or Not?

Honestly, I'm not sure. Here is my thinking: The problem I have with social search apps, is that you have to wait to have your question answered. If you are anything like me, (impatient, coffee swilling), then you may want to just go and use the tried and true method of Google search. It's not that I don't think its a great idea, I do, I just think that faster alternatives to finding answers exist.

The second issue I have with Twitter's Jelly app, is that it confines your answer base to just FaceBook and Twitter users. Although this may be addressed in a future update, it limits the audience of who can answer your question to your friend and contact list. Not only does this limit the audience, but it also allows you to get biased answers because after all, these people are your friends for a reason.

The future of Jelly will most likely lie within two elements of the app, the algorithm that controls what users see what questions, and all the combined answers the app collects from submissions. I tried to search for a few common questions, such as "Any cures for the hiccups", and was not met with any intelligently-worded answers. This could be due to the app still being in it's infancy, or due to the fact that my friends have no idea of any hiccup cures.

Stone states that the app was born out of his passion for helping people. By making it easy to respond to someone's question, he hopes to provide fast and relevant responses to it's users. He chose than name "Jelly" because he was inspired by jellyfish, which have "a loose network of nerves that act as a 'brain' similar to the way we envision loosely distributed networks of people coordinating via Jelly to help each other," Stone wrote in the offical Jelly blog.

Want to read some reviews of Twitter's Jelly app for yourself? Here is a list of the most popular reviews of the app on Google right now.