Are You Jelly?

By Caitlin Cunningham

Brought to you earlier this January by one of the cofounders of Twitter, Jelly is hyped as the next big thing in social media. It’s built on a simple question-and-answer format and currently available for free download as both iOS and Android apps.  The purpose of Jelly is to help users find answers to their questions in real time across their social networks.  Those with the Jelly app simply upload a photo, pose their inquiry to their connections and friends of friends, and wait for their responses.

Jelly’s core foundation lies in that sometimes using a search engine isn’t necessarily the fastest way to an answer.  For example, I think most of us are aware that Bing’s translator tool is universally useless. But if you have a native speaker of that language in your extended network, you’re much more likely to get a better idea hearing from him/her of what a sign is trying to tell you. Users also have the ability to star/follow other users’ questions that they also want to know the answers to or forward an interesting answer to their friends, even if they’re outside of Jelly.

While still in its infancy, the app has already gained a considerable following. It’ll be interesting to see where Jelly takes us in this information age.