(clickable walkthrough pdf here)
Wouldn’t it be great if talking face to face with an expert was as easy as a Google search? What do you want to know?
Everyone needs on-demand expert advice. A major purchase, tax question, a plumbing problem, medical concern, proofreading. But there are barriers to finding experts (it’s time consuming to find the right one) and getting what you need isn’t as easy as it should be (they don’t bill in seconds!). And search engines and Q&A sites? The last time you used one for expert advice you probably left feeling unsatisfied, or it took you half a day to find something you felt confident about.
Google Advice connects you with experts on demand. Have your everyday questions answered by experts in seconds or minutes, and for peanuts.
Google Advice enables people with full time jobs to make money sharing their expertise and hobbies. And freelancers to find work helping those most in need of their services. It’s the Amazon.com of the knowledge economy.
Who Should Build It?
Google:
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. The world’s information is still mostly in people’s heads and Google is continually finding ways to get it out. One Google product with a similar purpose was Knol, a sort of expert-based wikipedia that condoned expert opinion. But Knol treated information as a product, where Google Advice treats information as a service. It’s the difference between a book and a teacher. The industry as a whole has been learning that merely presenting information isn’t sufficient; it must be taught. This is why demand for UX and design has boomed, presentation and process matter. Another great reasons el goog should build this is it ties in beautifully with: Hangouts, Wallet, G+, YouTube (for recorded sessions), search (not finding what you want? How about instant advice), I could go on. And of course (opt-in) capturing information from the sessions themselves would be a gold mine.
Microsoft:
Skype and the business community. Plus, like the other contenders Microsoft has the clout to get early mainstream adoption that network-size-dependant products like this need.
LinkedIn:
Another natural fit, LinkedIn has been quietly expanding the breadth and depth of professional expertise indexing. If they don’t build something like this, whoever does will use LinkedIn data to the fullest extent possible.
Why I Made the Wireframes
I designed this years ago while working on my first startup (I needed lots of help) and never finished all of the wireframes. It’s one of those products that will inevitably exist, it’s just a matter of time, form, and execution. Though I like tackling important and hard projects, I wouldn’t want to take this on as a startup. I just want it built and will gladly help anyone that wants to tackle it.
This product will change peoples lives by giving them an instant advisor when they need an answer, a teacher when they want learn, and a student when they want to share.
(edit 07/25/13: Turns out Google had the same idea! http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/24/meet-helpouts-googles-secret-plan-to-bring-live-video-commerce-to-local-businesses/
How cool is that!)