MinuteBox is a new site which bills itself as a market place for people to buy and sell short snippets of advice. It’s a full-on social network with all the usual features as well as in-built video chat. You put up your problem, “experts” bid on your request, users choose their advisor and buy their advice for as little at 50 pence per hour minute. It even has a billing and rating systems (which didn’t work for me I might add).
At least that’s the theory. In reality I think this site has about a snowflake’s chance in the white hot cauldron of a collapsing star, and it’ll probably be overwhelmed by porn merchants faster than you can say “charge for online video.” Assuming they find it.
Luckily there is a silver lining. It’s great frame for a site that might work, where the business model was rather more focused. At least the relatively light-weight RecommendBox has an angle (recommendations). MinuteBox is about as targeted as a jam sandwich. It reminds me of Horses Mouth, but even there they have never gone so far as to say their mentors could ever charge for their “wisdomocracy” (excuse me while I puke).
But founder Josh Liu appears to be young and cleary smart (recent MBA from Imperial college) so I think someone should snap him and his site up ASAP and set it to work on some other problem that’s a bit easier to address than solving the entire world’s problems a minute at a time. Sorry Josh – have another go mate.
UPDATE: I’m happy to acknowledge that there may be more to this that meets the eye, though I personally remain sceptical. Buyers can set their price higher than 50p per hour (or anything) so in theory there is a market mechanism to make this site work. Josh tells me there are other sites in this space include LivePerson, BitWine, and Wengo. BitWine recently started going to partners while Wengo is going for a pay-per-call expert network. I think I am just more of a fan of mobile “find an answer to this problem” than I am of online, because online people tend to search more often than consult experts.
Does seem a rather odd idea – I can’t see many experts spending their time bidding for work at 50p per hour!
Think editorial is pushing out reporting at TCUK. Sorry Mike, but more interested in Josh’s view of the world than yours, and there appears little room for that after you have “screened the investment”. Think TCUK would be better if there was more stores and less editorial. Needs more content without the deep editorial dives IMHO.
Thanks a lot. We appreciate any comments and we will keep improving that.
50p per hour? If you saw that from seller’s Buy Now rate, that is 50 per minute instead of an hour. As an expert, you of course can set your rate for people to talk to you by our Buy Now function.
In terms of the bidding, every buyer has the right to decide the maximum price he would like to pay for the advice. If he/she sets a ridiculously low price, no one will bid on that and then he/she will realise that he/she should raise up the maximum price. That is standard market mechanism, right?
There are some similar websites in the US and France, and they are all doing very well to leverage the long tail of people’s advice/time. With different approach to entry into the market, we are still confident this could give users benefits. However, we certainly will try harder to improve the site.
Josh Liu
I had a look at this site a few times following your blog and even registered an account. I think it may be a bit quick off the mark to condemn the idea. I have seen a couple of similar competitor sites that seem to be doing quite well. One of them sold for something like $13m(US). I was quite impressed by some of the features of the site. Its early days. The site has merely launched as “beta”. I think it warrants another look at some point in the future, when it has been running for awhile and gathering momentum. It may well become a bit more focused in some areas as time goes on. I would also imagine it probably won’t be “overwhelmed by porn merchants” as it doesn’t seem to be at all what the site’s creators intended when looking at their apparent model. I’m should think they will police that accordingly…
Liam – Don’t be so dull.
Josh – Have updated the post.
In some ways I think there may be more of an issue with the launch strategy here. Going to a site where the founder is one of the only members is not really inspiring. Perhaps staying in closed alpha, getting some enthusiasts to test the service first, offering some exclusive invites etc and THEN coming out with a Beta that feels more populated might have been a better approach. I’m not saying give up, I’m saying try a different tack.
I for one would more than welcome the opportunity to lay to rest the countless hours I’ve spent searching and trawling forums for advice, and filtering out snide responses from pedants with a million posts to their name. It’s a process that I see as a necassary evil, not one that I relish as an ‘online person’.
It’s an interesting idea, and one that I think could work well.
I wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand so easily. Questico had a similar model back in the Web 1.0 days in Germany, itself copied (of course) from some American site. They found an incredibly profitable niche in astrology advice (no kidding) and prospered very nicely.
The problem is how many people is there on the site to give advice on a million and one subjects i think thats where the problem lies the old chicken and egg situation,your not gonna gain traction unless you got a whole host of experts on the site ready and willing to give advice unless this is sorted out pretty quickly you will be drowning in the deadpool.
Heads up which could save you:
You can get a load of experts from where they all want to earn cash “Students” which could solve all your problems
Florian – Yeah, my point as well – it needs to go niche. Astrology or whatever.
Hmmmm, this may be our next tech support model!
Thanks for all the comments. They are really helpful and constructive. I really appreciate them.
Yes, we have identified some highly feasible categories to test the model, and psychic reading/astrology is one of them. We are trying hard to approach experts in those categories and get them on board now. Hopefully we will make the site busier gradually. I will definitely work my fingers to the bone to make this work and any suggestions are appreciated.
Josh Liu
You could probably estimate the pricing and value of these sort of markets by looking at the equivalent Yahoo & Google services.
I haven’t done any formal analysis, but I think 50p sounds low for any substantial stuff – but if this is a true market it should be able to let trades find their price
But why go to a site where you pay 50p for advice, when you can go to, say, http://www.metafilter.com/ask and get a very similar service (complete with ratings etc.) for free?