Aardvark was a social search service that connected users live with friends
or friends-of-friends who were able to answer their questions, also known as a
knowledge market. Users submitted questions via the Aardvark website,
email or instant messenger and Aardvark identified and facilitated a live chat
or email conversation with one or more topic experts in the asker's extended
social network. Aardvark was used for asking subjective questions for which
human judgment or recommendation was desired. It was also used extensively
for technical support questions. Users could also review question and answer
history and other settings on the Aardvark website. Google acquired
Aardvark for $50 million on February 11, 2010. In September 2011, Google
announced it would discontinue a number of its products, including Aardvark.
History Aardvark was originally developed by The
Mechanical Zoo, a San Francisco-based startup founded in 2007 by Max Ventilla,
Nathan Stoll, Damon Horowitz and Rob Spiro. A prototype version of Aardvark
was launched in early 2008 with an alpha launch in October 2008. Aardvark was
released to the public in March 2009, although initially new users had to be
invited by existing users. The company did not release usage statistics.
The name Mechanical Zoo was chosen in homage to the machine-like aspect of its
applications, including Aadvark and other animal-named products that were
intended for future release. Interaction model
When a user joined Aardvark, aardvark was added to the user's IM buddylist.
Users submitted questions by email or IM. Aardvark guided the user through the
question process by providing messages that confirmed receipt of the question
and explained any actions required of the user. IM users were able to use a
variety of "IM commands"—one word messages that could be used to fine-tune
the question parameters, invite new users, or get help.
There were two main interaction flows available in Aardvark for answering a
question. The primary flow involved Aardvark sending a message to the user
asking if the user would like to answer a question. Periodically, Aardvark
contacted users via email or IM when it believed they were well-suited to answer
another user's question. Aardvark searched through one's friends and
friends' friends also. Instead of sending the question to every friend it
found, it searched a person's profile to see if there were information related to
the question. When Aardvark sent a question to the
user, if the user responded affirmatively, Aardvark relayed the
question as well as the name of the questioner. The user could then simply
type an answer to the question, a friend's name or email address to refer
to someone who may know the answer or simply type in "pass" to pass on the
request. Aardvark sent such requests for answers less than once a day to a given
user. Aardvark supported Google Talk, Windows
Live Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger.
A secondary flow of answering questions was more similar to traditional
bulletin-board style interactions: a user sent a message to Aardvark or
visited the "Answering" tab of the website, Aardvark showed the user a
recent question from the user's network which had not yet been answered and
which was related to the user's profile topics. This mode involved the user
initiating the exchange when the user was in the mood to try to answer a
question; as such, it had the benefit of tapping into users who acted as eager
potential answerers. In all of the interfaces, wrappers
around messages from another user included information about the user to
facilitate trust: the user's real name, age, gender, the social connection
between the two users, a section of topics the user had expertise in, and
summary statistics of the user's activity on Aardvark.
Funding and economic strategies The Mechanical Zoo was privately held,
prior to acquisition by Google. Initial funding was in early 2008, with $750,000
in convertible debt from angel investors. This was followed by a series
A funding round of $6 million, led by August Capital, in October of 2008.
See also Human search engine
References