GigPark is a new social media / word-of-mouth referral web 2.0 and Facebook application (whew!)
What all that jargon means is that if you’re looking for a plumber, accountant, real estate agent or magician you have a convenient place where you can ask your friends (or their friends).
The concept is simple; invite your friends to GigPark, and then start asking them questions. Your questions are immediately visible to your friends, and their friends.
Friends, not strangers. What makes GigPark different is that you have a relationship with the people making recommendations — they are your friends or the friends of your friends, not weirdo strangers who may be plugging their own businesses.
When I signed up, one of the GigPark founders immediately became my ‘friend’ (through the magic of programming, I’m sure, since I never met him). Lucky for me, he has 342 friends (everyone signed up to date?) so my query will have some pretty good reach.
To add friends, GigPark makes it easy, hooking into popular online email services. They’ve also developed a GigPark Facebook application that you can add to your Facebook account.
Removing the complex and leaving the simple, this application is similar to the ‘Question & Answer’ feature in LinkedIn. You ask a question of a trusted group and expect that the replies should be of higher quality, or so the theory goes.
My take: it’s a new service so the jury is out. GigPark is still in development, and from reading the FAQ, it looks like they’re going to be expanding the service to individuals and businesses (they call them service providers).
Eventually, I’m thinking it may have value, as the number of users increases. Then again, when you add more people to the mix, the greater your chance of diluting the value of responses. And we’ll have to see how the service providers fit into the mix.
Your thoughts? Are you on GigPark? If so, what’s your experience?
Update: It’s only been a few hours since I posted my query on GigPark, and I’ve already received one response.
Technorati Tags: GigPark, Social Media, Word of mouth, referral, trust, facebook
Leave a Reply