There's a line out there that basically says a definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different result. If that's the case, then Biz Stone, who was one of the founders of Twitter, is nuts. I wrote about Jelly in January 2014 and said "To be honest, if this had been produced by anyone other than Biz Stone it would have sunk without a trace. Because it's bad. Not only is it bad, it's pointless." I also predicted that it wouldn't last for long. Well, it's back again and it's going to crash again. It's a 'search engine' whereby you ask questions and people out there answer them for you. We have seen this concept time after time after time. Q&A resources seldom work - even my favourite, Quora, isn't mainstream. Mahalo never produced the goods, ChaCha was pointless and Wonder, launched almost a year ago to the day is trying to make a living with paid questions.
The problem with all of these services is many fold. First of all, and let's say this really loudly, and hope that Stone hears - they are not search engines. With a search engine you expect to - you know, search for stuff. With this resource, you type in your query, and hope that someone is going to answer it. That's NOT a search engine. The most that I can do with Jelly is browse through subject categories and hope that I can find something - anything - that matches my interests. Unfortunately, it's unlikely. I managed to find a topic called Internet. These are the kind of questions that I was finding: "what is the average salary for a front-end web developer in Ireland?' 'Which are some good websites to promote indie games that are still in production ?' and 'What's the last wifi technology?' I particularly liked 'What's the best search engine?' with the stunning answer 'Google is great'. Seriously? Dear God, it doesn't get any better.
Another problem of course is 'who are these people?' Not the ones asking the questions, but the ones answering them. I have no idea at all. The guy who said that Google is great had 23 helpful answers. Well, that's alright then, I can certainly trust what he's got to say. Seriously - just go along to Wikipedia and see what other people are saying. Better yet, take any of the questions that have been asked and punch them straight into your favourite search engine and you'll get better and more comprehensive replies instantly.
Jelly was, and remains a total waste of web space. Seriously, seriously bad.
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