I’m in love with an animal!

No, this isn’t some kind of bestiality confession.  I’m talking about Aardvark — a 15-person San Francisco startup made up largely of ex-Googlers and backed by $6 million from top investors.  Like many relationships, this one started with a friend’s introduction.  In February, Omar Christidis had been waxing poetic about Aardvark — ‘vark for short — and soon I was begging to be set up.  A friend of Aardvark’s founder Max Ventilla, Omar was an early member of the service and gladly passed on an invite.

Unlike most online services, Aardvark’s focus isn’t on their website.  Instead, Aardvark lives on your buddy list. Like a good friend desperately in need of a social life, its green ‘available’ dot glows brightly 24/7.  When you IM a question to Aardvark, it goes digging for the answer.  First the service analyzes and categorizes the question, then — and this is the real magic — it routes the question to an ‘expert’ who responds, usually in a matter of minutes.

Does it work?  Hell yeah.  My first challenge posed to the service was to ask it something local.  After all, how many early aardvark users could possible live in my neighborhood?
me:
What’s the best bar in boerum hill, brooklyn?

aardvark:
Got it. I’m sending your question to someone who knows about *going out*
[6 minutes later]

aardvark:
(From Naomi/F/Brooklyn,NY, Re: *going out* )
I like the Brooklyn Inn on Bergen and Hoyt maybe. no food. just booze. local.

Wow, I was impressed. Not only was there another Aardvark user in my neighborhood, but she was online at that moment.  And helpful!  A day or two later, Aardvark posed its first question to me from a user in State College, PA asking “How much is your iPhone monthly bill?”  Aardvark sent me the perfect question and I was able to give an answer accurate to the penny…being helpful felt really good!

I continued to use aardvark over the next few weeks, asking progressively harder questions.  And each time, it stepped up its game.  One time I sent Aardvark a chunk of Objective C programming code — a bug had stumped my friend and I and also stumped the readers of a popular programming site.  Sending it to Aardvark was a last resort and pretty much a joke. But less than five minutes later, Aardvark sent back a one-line response that solved the bug. My question had been routed to Colin Barrett, creator of Adium (a popular aim/icq/msn messaging client) and master of all things Mac programming related.  We had a back-and-forth conversation through aardvark, and exchanged contact information which came in handy later.

At precisely this moment I realized Aardvark was much more than a simple ‘question answering service’.  It was an expert network.

Have you ever heard of the Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG)?  I hadn’t either until a friend started working there.  Essentially GLG connects corporations/investors to experts on very specific subject matters.

Perhaps a corporation is considering launching a new product that’s outside their core expertise.  They have questions and concerns about the launch which require an expert opinion.  They pay GLG gobs of money to play matchmaker.  GLG sorts through its database of 200,000 experts and sets up an interview/consultation between the the expert and the corporation. It’s big business. GLG’s 2008 revenues were $284 million.

Essentially, Aardvark is GLG for the little guy.  Or it’s GLG for the ‘long tail’ of questions.  Over the past few months, I’ve used Aardvark to consult with experts on all sorts of topics, not just to ask simple questions but to have entire discussions!  In addition to getting coding help, I’ve had hour long conversations about mobile micropayments with the Senior Mobile Product Manager at a major social networking site.  I also found a very helpful PR expert who discussed in detail with me how best to do press outreach for an upcoming project.  I’ve even used aardvark to have questions answered by lawyers and doctors.

Categories of Questions Asked (source: vark.com blog)

The key to Aardvark’s success is threefold:
1)  Intelligent routing. When aardvark asks me to answer a question, I’m happy to help.  I know aardvark isn’t wasting my time with irrelevant queries.

2)  A great network of ‘experts.’ The quality of Aardvark’s answers is only as good as the quality of its users.  Aardvark was started by a group of ex-googlers and as an invite-only service it has spread through real-world networks attracting a very impressively credentialed userbase.  Aardvark’s ‘refer’ feature is also brilliant.  I don’t know the answer to every question Aardvark poses to me.  But I probably know someone who knows the answer. Using the referral feature, I can pass the question to the right person.

3)  A gift economy and a feedback system.  Like Wikipedia or Yelp, users contribute to Aardvark because they have benefited from the service and want to give back.  Also, Aardvark encourages it’s users to type “thanks” in response to a useful answer and being helpful and getting thanked feels good.  (”thanks” also works as a feedback mechanism to help Aardvark identify its most helpful users and route questions better.)

As a former sociology major interested in social networks and information flow, I find Aardvark absolutely fascinating.  As an enterpreneurial person working on several projects and needing answers to dozens of questions, I’ve found the service to be priceless.  To monetize the service, Aardvark plans to fold in targeted advertising.  Should that not pan out, I have a feeling they could do just fine by creating a premium paid expert advice service.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts about Aardvark and the emerging social search space.  And if you want to sign up or add me as a ‘friend,’ do so here.