Wonder - a people based answer search engine

People based search engines are not new - we've had Mahalo and ChaCha in the past, but neither of them have really cut it, and so both have now evolved into slightly different resources. Now we have a new entrant into the field in the form of 'Wonder - your personal research assistant.' The idea is very straightforward; simply type in your question in 'human form', rather than keywords, since a real life human being is going to try and answer the question that you've asked. Wonder then takes your query - passes it onto a researcher who emails the answer back to you inside 2 hours.

I tried one of my usual questions - 'How was it decided that the D-Day beaches were given the code names that they were, and where did they get the names?' It's an interesting query, since it's not as easy as it first appears - the names of the beaches are obvious of course, but the who and the what behind it, a bit more complicated.

At 1 hour 40 minutes I got an email response from a 'Wonder librarian' called Emily. She found some great resources for me which answered my question (as best as it can be answered) and I was able to see the list of sites that she suggested as well. All in all, I was very impressed.

That's obviously only one side of the story though - I have 'reached out to them' and asked for more details - who do they use as researchers, do they get paid, how does the monetization of the system work, since I couldn't see any adverts, who checks their work and so on. 2 days later I'm still waiting for a response, so maybe I should ask one of the own research people. I'm also keen to know how they regard this against the many 'Ask a librarian' services as well. If I get an answer - I'll let you all know. 

However, until then - and only going with one answer - it's doing exactly what it says on the tin. 

Edited to add: I have now had a response to my email with more information from Justin Wohlstadter  as follows:

How do you make money, since there's no advertising on the site. Or is
that something you'll add in the future, and if so, what plans do you
have? 

We don't have any plans to advertise on the site. We're experimenting with a few different pricing models at the moment, with the goal of putting one in place that can support free questions for students while charging those who use Wonder for work or need more timely responses.


What is the criteria that you use to add someone to your query answering team? 

We look for individuals with exceptional backgrounds, deep subject experience, and degrees in library sciences or in various technical and professional fields. And we have a preference for good writers who express their thoughts clearly! Wonder has coverage 24/7, so our research community includes people around the globe.

 

 

How do you check their work? 

We have a robust Q&A process in place to ensure that every research response is great. Several of our researchers are tasked with reviewing every response to verify that they meet our research guidelines. And feedback emails also help us make sure that our researchers were on target.

 

Do they get paid? If so, how much? 

Our research community is comprised of librarians, teachers, and professionals, many of whom are volunteering their time to help students and other learners. To ensure we have full coverage, some of these individuals are compensated (though the exact number is variable). We invite anyone who might be interested to apply to join the community. And for volunteers there's no minimum time commitment and it's actually quite fun. 

How many questions have you answered so far? 

Many! 

How would you see Wonder differing from an 'ask a librarian' service.
Ask a Librarian services are wonderful, but unfortunately not many people know about them.  I think we have an opportunity to bring that kind of experience to many more people by making it a lot more accessible and easy to use.

Mahalo started off in similar fashion, as did Cha-Cha. How do you differentiate between them and yourselves, and did you learn any lessons from them? 

Often it's hard to know from the outside whether companies succeed or fail because of product issues, market timing issues, or completely unrelated forces. We just want to build something that people enjoy and that moves learning on the web forward.

 

Comments

[Frank Krentz]

I got some information about the site by reading postings at https://www.facebook.com/WonderLib.