Q&A websites review

Social networking ideas are hatching everywhere. Basically there are endless ways to bring people together, the aim is to let people meet, discuss and interact.

The new trend nowadays is the Questions & Answers websites. People with questions go there ask them and people who have answers, whether right or wrong, reply.

Forums have been doing that for ages, but with a major difference. Forums are most of the time specialized, so you find IT forums, medical forums, parental forums etc… If you have a question first you need to find the right forum for yourself. Then you have to subscribe, create a thread and post your question. This might seem tedious for those who need a fast answer.

Questions & Answers websites have another approach to the problem. You go find any of these websites, you still have to subscribe or login using your Facebook account for those who support Facebook Connect. Then you ask your question. The website will take charge of finding people who might answer it. It alleviates the task of finding the right place and the right people.

Forums are still very efficient when you have a very specific question. For example if you are a developer and looking to solve a problem, it is by far better if you search for it in a specialized forum, because all its members are IT professionals.

Conversely if you have general question related to an event, celebrity or broad business Q&A sites will be useful for you, because they gather people from different domains and backgrounds.

Another major benefit of the Q&A is socializing. Because people might have general questions there is a better chance to create a discussion. While specific question means that you are mostly interested in a good answer that solves your problem without having the time to chitchat.
There are many Q&A websites out there but the most known are Quora.com and Vark.com.

However the drawback that lacks behind is the absence of direct one to one discussion with interesting people. This is where http://www.simpleconnexion.com/ is trying to solve.

Selective Chat vs Random Chat

Random chat is a new trend for chatting. It started in mid 2009 with Omegle and continued in 2010 with Chatroulette. Although it is popular, there are some severe problems concerning these services.

These issues were detailed in a previous blog “Random Chat Review” and in short they are: a person can’t easily chat because users are always hitting next button, there are lots of perversions and people abusing the service by showing sexual acts, most of the time guys are looking for girls who are rarely found.

Although the idea is appealing, however these services are not delivering real value. What is meant by real value is to be able to have a nice chat with interesting people with whom some would share a minimum of common stuff.

Selective Chat might be the solution! This is fairly a new term that does not appear a lot on Google Search or Google Trends. It consists of finding the right person to chat with. A person who displays a minimum profile that allows others to find him or her.

As opposed to social networking services like Facebook or others the aim of a “Selective Chat” is to bring together people who want to chat and express a preference for a specific topic. While on social networking people share videos, images and activities with contacts and friends; they are reluctant to accept people they don’t know. Besides they are not necessarily online at the same time and might not be interested in chatting at all.

Conversely in “Selective Chat” people go there in order to find someone to chat with. However to avoid lengthy introduction and discovery of interests of the other person, “Selective Chat” gives people the option to build a mini profile in which they can tell about themselves, their interests, their personal website or YouTube.

Because each person might have his/her own set of preferences and interests it will be easier to find others who share the those interests, thus resulting in a nice constructive chat that deliver value to the chatters and might pave the way for some more evolved types of relations.

This concept is being implemented by http://www.simpleconnexion.com/ in which this service is trying to offer chatters an appropriate context for people to meet each other and discuss about common topics in real time.