Beyonce once sang the following line, “I don’t think you’re ready for this Jelly…” and those words may be true as sports marketers and advertisers look to understand how to use the new Jelly App.
Jelly was created by Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, whose new mobile-only startup is banking on the idea that relying on people for answers is better than a google algorithm.
What is Jelly?
Jelly is similar to using a conventional search engine in that you enter a query and it returns answers and information. So, how exactly is that innovative and why would I want to download this app if that is the case? Good question.
Jelly differentiates itself from a typical search engine by finding answers using pictures and people in our social networks. In other words, instead of relying on an algorithm to turn up search results, you use those connected in your network (facebook or twitter) with the added benefit of it being fun. I like to think of Jelly as a hybrid of yahoo answers meets Snapchat, meets Instagram with the social aspect of Twitter.
According to Biz Stone, the Jelly app “comes down to a matter of expectation. If you were to send a query out to your social networks, you might get an answer, you might not. So you could get lucky.”
When Twitter came onto the social media scene many viewed it as just another form of messaging much like WhatsApp. However, there are specific uses for those two platforms like when to send a tweet and when to use WhatsApp over iMessage or text messaging. Biz Stone’s hope is that Jelly will fall into the same messaging category “enter into that muscle-memory lexicon for apps.”
Getting Started
After a week of trying Jelly on my iPhone, I was able to grasp the nuances of the app, such as, deciding whether a question was “good,” if i wanted to “answer” the question, or if I wanted to “forward” the question to my twitter and facebook followers (as discussed below). In order to get the full capability of Jelly, it is best to have a strong influence on facebook and twitter – that is, active users who follow you and use the Jelly app.
You can tap on the screen then add an answer or read existing ones, or flick downward to get rid of a query result. If you want to ask a question, you have to take or include a photo (you can use an image on your phone or search Google Images within the app), type a question, and submit it.
From left to right:
1 – a user taking a picture (jelly’s basic requirement in order to ask a question)
2 – the question following the picture by the user with three options: good, answer, forward. Good is an option for you to mark as “yes, this is a legitimate question or “good” question” and once you designate it as such, it will show up to everyone in your facebook and twitter networks that are using the Jelly app.
3 – Answer is a pretty self explanatory and its layout is seen in the next photo.
4 – Forward is an option that you can link through text, e-mail, twitter, or facebook.
Unfortunately, there is no way for a user to search for specific questions from a sports marketer, team, brand as you would for a specific tweet. During my week of using Jelly, I did not encounter one sports related question. Herein lays my major issue with Jelly – it is focused more on random social engagement. The lack of a keyword search for your favorite brand could prove detrimental to the app’s ability to have people engage on this platform instead of facebook or twitter.
How is this related to sports?
As I mentioned – think of the Jelly App as a crowdsourcing utopia with people helping people. For sports marketers, advertisers, and teams – they can theoretically use this platform to figure out what their fans like while creating content that will keep them engage. For a Marketing Director at Nike – they can take a picture of various Oregon Ducks uniforms and ask,“What do you think of the new signature shoe?” For a Social Media Manager of a sports team, they can put a picture showing two alternate jerseys and ask “What do you think should be our new home jersey?”
Ultimately, Jelly’s sports potential is intriguing to ponder but it still has a long way to go before it is a viable research tool for sports marketers and advertisers. Right now, Jelly does not have enough users or digital buzz surrounding it to make sports marketers, advertisers, or brands want to use that platform more than others.