With user engagement increasingly becoming the holy grail of social media, new services such as Pinterest have been grabbing the spotlight. Another social service premised on sharing and receiving opinions is, however, reporting double the engagement rates of the social pin-boarding site.
Mobile app Thumb (formerly Opinionaided) lets users get real-time feedback on anything from clothing to which movie to watch. Users rate submissions with a thumbs-up, thumbs-down or “neutral” response.
While Pinterest users are reportedly spending close to 98 minutes a month on the much-hyped social pin-boarding site, Thumb's chief business development officer, Hadley Harris, says the average Thumb user uses the app for three hours and 45 minutes a month. This places the app second only to Facebook in terms of user engagement (according to ComScore, users spend an average of 423 minutes on Facebook a month).
“Additionally, our user base has tripled since the fall,” says Harris, adding that Thumb competes for mindshare with the likes of Pinterest and Twitter. “However, our focus is ensuring that Thumb continues to be the go-to platform for instant opinions. We have achieved product-market fit as demonstrated through our metrics.”
Harris says it is the instant interactivity of the app that makes Thumb different from competitors. “If you ask a question on Thumb, you will get an average of 70 people's opinions in just a few minutes. If you try doing that on Facebook or Twitter, you will only get a couple responses. Thumb offers a form of communication that has never been possible before.”
Plethora of opinions
According to Harris, Thumb was created with the goal of helping people get quick opinions, in real-time, while they were shopping. “After various twists and turns in an effort to get it just right, we launched a simple mobile utility app to achieve that goal in the summer of 2010.
“Immediately after launch, we were surprised to find that not only were people asking questions about lots of things besides shopping, they were going out of their way to connect with new people in the community,” says Harris.
“We were pleasantly surprised at how many people loved to help others, leaving a plethora of opinions and advice and, in their own words, getting addicted to that simple action. Since then, our utility has turned into a vibrant community of vocal users that love instantly connecting and sharing opinions with many people.”
Harris says the team behind Thumb has “detailed plans” for generating revenue, but is not disclosing its business model or timeline for execution as yet. “Our primary objective is to focus on user experience. We believe doing that will lead to both user base growth and increased intensity of usage.”
Thumb is currently available on iOS and Android.
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