A couple of months ago, I joined a social service called Aardvark. For those who don’t know what it is, it’s a social search engine. After adding the Aardvark bot to your IM list, you ask it a question. Aardvark then sends out your question to other users in hopes of finding you an answer.
“Why?” you may ask. It’s great for finding out about things that you wouldn’t be able to get elsewhere. Say you’re on vacation, and you want to get an idea of what restaurants in the area are superb. You ask the Aardvark bot, and anyone who has set up their account to receive questions about food, restaurants, etc, will either be IM’ed or emailed your question. They can then tap out an answer to you that will be sent back either via IM or email.
On a few occasions, I have asked Aardvark users to name some heavy metal or rock bands that I might not have heard of. Lesser known bands, possibly unsigned. These are the bands that would be buried on a myriad of lists on MySpace, bands with great local support, but not much outside recognition.
I can search Google for “unsigned metal bands in Seattle WA”, but only one result looks anything like what I was looking for, a site that is a list of unsigned bands in Seattle. The rest of the results range from lists of unsigned bands in various cities around the world, a history of hard rock in Seattle, and an article about someone trying to impersonate Metal Blade records. Not exactly what I was looking for. By asking Aardvark, I get responses from individuals around the world. Not only that, but individuals who have tagged themselves as music experts. And what’s better than getting answers directly from the experts?
Here’s where it starts to get a little silly, though. I, of course, have myself tagged to answer questions regarding music, guitars, heavy metal, rock, and a few other things. I was sent a notice while I was at work that someone had a question regarding guitars. I elected to see the question, and I find out that the questioner wanted to know the body scale of a certain model of guitar.
Now, I can name three places on the web off the top of my head that you can find such information: the manufacturer’s site, Sam Ash, or Guitar Center. Instead of going to one of these sites and searching for thee model of guitar he was asking about, he instead decided to ask everyone on Aardvark with a tag for guitar who was on at that time and able to answer the question, wait for them to find out the information, and then send it back.
Here’s an IM I sent to a friend just after this happened:
me: I wish I was at home so I could lmgtfy.com some stupid fucking aardvark questions
To the people who use Aardvark in such a manner, please don’t. It’s a waste of your time, it’s a waste of my time, and it’s a waste of Aardvark’s time. Aardvark was created to be more of a recommendation engine. Where should I eat, where should I buy my shoes, what should I do while in town, what should I listen to? Otherwise, please visit Google/Bing/Yahoo and search for yourself.
Join my network at Aardvark right now. I only have a limited number of invites, so first come first serve.
