Called “highly addictive” and “dead simple” by others,
Thumb is a social networking service that makes it easy to ask a question and get answers instantly through either the Thumb website or free
iPhone app. Recently, AppAdvice had the opportunity to discuss the service with Thumb’s Chief Business Development Officer, Hadley Harris, who discussed what makes his product unique and what he hopes to achieve in the future.
Background
Thumb, which first launched in 2010 as Opinionaided, is actually more popular than other social utilities such as Pinterest and Tumblr. In fact, users are now spending three and a half hours a month requesting and giving opinions on Thumb, versus visitors who only spend an hour and a half per month on those sites.
To put this into more perspective, Google+ users only visit the site
three minutes per month!
One On One
AppAdvice: What makes Thumb different than other services in the marketplace?
Hadley Harris: What makes Thumb different from any other app is that it allows users to interact with many people almost instantly. If you ask a question on Thumb you will get an average of around 70 people's opinions in a matter of minutes. If you try doing that on Facebook or Twitter you will only get a couple responses, if you're lucky. What's even better, once you get these opinions you have the opportunity to connect in a private one-on-one conversation with the people who included comments with their response. Thumb offers a form of communication that has never been possible before.
AppAdvice: What enhancements to the service do you expect to arrive in 2012 and beyond?
Harris: Unfortunately we can't share much about what’s in our product roadmap but you can expect us to continue to refine Thumb to give users the best possible way to instantly get and give opinions from real people. We have some features coming out soon that will allow users to better build an investment in the product over time.
AppAdvice: Who is your target audience?
Harris: Our goal has been to provide a tool to any user that is seeking a high-volume of instant opinions. Currently, we are seeing an audience that skews toward early-adopter, however, we are seeing a trend toward diversification of age and geographic location with a male/female split.
AppAdvice: What are your thoughts on Thumb as it relates to iOS?
Harris: We're big fans of the iOS platform. We started with iOS and it continues to be a great ecosystem for us. Over the next couple months we will be launching quite a few new things on our iOS app, so stay tuned.
To become part of Thumb, visit
their website or download their
free app today in the App Store.
