Twitter co-founder Biz Stone’s latest side project came to fruition Tuesday as the Jelly app was launched, providing users with a new question-based search engine.
“Jelly changes how we find answers because it uses pictures and people in our social networks,” a blog post on Jelly’s site said. “It turns out that getting answers from people is very different from retrieving information with algorithms.”
Users can connect to other users that they’re already connected with on Facebook and Twitter, and utilize photos to ask questions – for example, a picture of a city map can be used to ask where the best burrito can be found, a picture of a homework problem can find the solution, and a picture of a sports team’s logo can promote discussion as to who the team’s best player is. These are just a small amount of ways Jelly can be used.
Jelly’s blog post highlights three critical features – the connection with existing social networks, forwarding a question to anyone who may know the answer and the utilization of images. While other search engines pride themselves on using algorithms to answer as quick as possible, Jelly prides itself on questions answered by real people in real time.
“No matter how sophisticated our algorithms become, they are still no match for the experience, inventiveness, and creativity of the human mind,” the post said. “Jelly is a new way to search and something more – it makes helping other people easy and fun.”
Jelly is available for both Android and iOS devices. For more information on the service, head to jelly.co.
