In the first of a series of profiles on my staff’s projects and works in progress, today I’m featuring Felix ‘Kayt’ Kitaka and his Facebook application found at Answerbird.com. Answerbird was built out of his frustration from getting answers to questions with a purely local slant. He lives in Kampala, Uganda, and asking a question like where can one purchase the new Asus laptop might result in answers from all over the globe. With Answerbird, developer Felix Kitaka is not only offering a service relevant to Uganda but to the whole world, the questions and answers are crowd-sourced to the users circle of friends on Facebook.
I really admire Felix’s ambition with his applications. Since so many web 2.0 services are worried about the developing world draining their bandwidth, Felix’s approach has been to create local gateways to interact with the service that over 60,000 Ugandans actively use on a daily basis.
How Does it Work?
Answerbird is simple. Just point your browser to Answerbird.com. You’ll be asked to use Facebook Connect to authenticate the use of your application with your profile. Once you’ve signed up you’ll be taken to a Twitter-like interface where you simply ask questions. Automatically your question is posted to your profile on Answerbird.com (which sits on the Appfrica2 servers) but you’re given the option to also make the question your status update. This allows people who don’t use the service to offer their input via Facebook, while Answerbird users can answer using Facebook or in threaded conversations at Answerbird.com.
The first thing you might notice about Answerbird is that it looks a lot like Twitter. In fact, the UI is very much inspired by Twitter, only we’ve added threaded comments and private messaging that live outside of Facebook. This allows for faster search of the data indexed by the service. The site uses Facebook Connect to ‘live’ outside of Facebook because sometimes there may be group discussions that users don’t want to take over their Facebook page.
Future features include sending your question to other social networks like Twitter and interacting via SMS (a feature available for everyone here in the office but we’ve shut it off for the public).
The Value of Local Knowledge
The cool thing about Answerbird is that it leverages your Facebook friends (usually your real-world social network) to crowd-source questions and answers. Some other cool features of Answerbird are chacheing and search for quickly looking up things that may have asked and answered before. There’s a lot of services that do this (like YahooAnswers) but many of them don’t allow for the natural filter of using your close friends and colleagues for quick bits of knowledge. Felix, who lives in Kampala, Uganda understands the value of the knowledge of his peers. Not only can he ask for very specific information (ex. What are the directions to the new Nakumat?) but he can use it as a rallying point (ex. Who wants to go to with me to see XO: Wolverine this weekend?). Beyond that, there’s a search feature that allows users to see what’s been asked and ansered before.
Felix has big plans for the future of Answerbird and even grander plans for his next apps. I can’t say much more at the moment, but definitely look forward to a follow up with Felix and the applications he’s building primarily for the Ugandan market. I can assure you all, this is the least interesting of the apps he’s working on! The implications for this project are huge, services like Question Box (which Appfrica is also incubating) use a centralized database to answer questions for rural and disenfranchised populations. Answerbird has the potential to be the tool connected Ugandans (and anyone else) use to find out the answers to any questions they might have when paired with an offline database like the one Question Box uses. Want to help us beta test? Head on over to Answerbird.com and pilot it for yourselves!
Felix Kitaka, Developer at Appfrica Labs
Discolsure: Answerbird and Question Box are projects that Appfrica Labs is funding as part of our incubator. Appfrica holds an equity stake in the properties it incubates and launches.
About the author: Jonathan Gosier is a software developer, writer and social entrepreneur. He currently lives in Kampala, Uganda where he incubates and invests in East African entrepreneurs as the CEO of Appfrica Labs. He's also a TED Fellow.
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Answerbird Flies High
In the first of a series of profiles on my staff’s projects and works in progress, today I’m featuring Felix ‘Kayt’ Kitaka and his Facebook application found at Answerbird.com. Answerbird was built out of his frustration from getting answers to questions with a purely local slant. He lives in Kampala, Uganda, and asking a question like where can one purchase the new Asus laptop might result in answers from all over the globe. With Answerbird, developer Felix Kitaka is not only offering a service relevant to Uganda but to the whole world, the questions and answers are crowd-sourced to the users circle of friends on Facebook.
I really admire Felix’s ambition with his applications. Since so many web 2.0 services are worried about the developing world draining their bandwidth, Felix’s approach has been to create local gateways to interact with the service that over 60,000 Ugandans actively use on a daily basis.
How Does it Work?
Answerbird is simple. Just point your browser to Answerbird.com. You’ll be asked to use Facebook Connect to authenticate the use of your application with your profile. Once you’ve signed up you’ll be taken to a Twitter-like interface where you simply ask questions. Automatically your question is posted to your profile on Answerbird.com (which sits on the Appfrica2 servers) but you’re given the option to also make the question your status update. This allows people who don’t use the service to offer their input via Facebook, while Answerbird users can answer using Facebook or in threaded conversations at Answerbird.com.
The first thing you might notice about Answerbird is that it looks a lot like Twitter. In fact, the UI is very much inspired by Twitter, only we’ve added threaded comments and private messaging that live outside of Facebook. This allows for faster search of the data indexed by the service. The site uses Facebook Connect to ‘live’ outside of Facebook because sometimes there may be group discussions that users don’t want to take over their Facebook page.
Future features include sending your question to other social networks like Twitter and interacting via SMS (a feature available for everyone here in the office but we’ve shut it off for the public).
The Value of Local Knowledge
The cool thing about Answerbird is that it leverages your Facebook friends (usually your real-world social network) to crowd-source questions and answers. Some other cool features of Answerbird are chacheing and search for quickly looking up things that may have asked and answered before. There’s a lot of services that do this (like YahooAnswers) but many of them don’t allow for the natural filter of using your close friends and colleagues for quick bits of knowledge. Felix, who lives in Kampala, Uganda understands the value of the knowledge of his peers. Not only can he ask for very specific information (ex. What are the directions to the new Nakumat?) but he can use it as a rallying point (ex. Who wants to go to with me to see XO: Wolverine this weekend?). Beyond that, there’s a search feature that allows users to see what’s been asked and ansered before.
Felix has big plans for the future of Answerbird and even grander plans for his next apps. I can’t say much more at the moment, but definitely look forward to a follow up with Felix and the applications he’s building primarily for the Ugandan market. I can assure you all, this is the least interesting of the apps he’s working on! The implications for this project are huge, services like Question Box (which Appfrica is also incubating) use a centralized database to answer questions for rural and disenfranchised populations. Answerbird has the potential to be the tool connected Ugandans (and anyone else) use to find out the answers to any questions they might have when paired with an offline database like the one Question Box uses. Want to help us beta test? Head on over to Answerbird.com and pilot it for yourselves!
Felix Kitaka, Developer at Appfrica Labs
Discolsure: Answerbird and Question Box are projects that Appfrica Labs is funding as part of our incubator. Appfrica holds an equity stake in the properties it incubates and launches.