Yoosk.com

Submitted by: Tim Hood and Keith Halstead

Describe your idea. What will you do?

In its second year of operation (est. April 07), www.yoosk.com is an innovative yet well established participatory media platform that is forging a direct conversation between the public and those with power or fame. It connects residents with councillors, constituents with MPs and voters with candidates.

Please see the front page for press coverage, a video introduction and details of our shortlisting for the UK catalyst awards.

Yoosk uses the wisdom of the crowd to gather and sort the most important questions and suggestions that users want to put to public figures. Then it enables those public figures to reply directly using video or text.

But the conversation doesn't stop there. Yoosk users can comment on and rate those answers, as well as build communities of news enthusiasts around local or national issues.

Yoosk is a platform with universal applicability. Its CMS and widgets can be used by councils, government departments and political parties to gather questions from as wide an audience as possible: allowing users to decide on the questions put to key public figures in their region or field of interest.

We will use the innovation fund to set up a number of local Yoosks in partnership with councils (the CMS supports sub-domains), building on already well established prototypes. We will also build on initial approaches to Government departments, the Cabinet Office and Parliament. Our aim is to achieve critical mass until the concept becomes the norm

Yoosk will not be simply a database for users to view Q and As with public figures- it will be a fully integrated system for conversing with public figures all over the country and at all levels.

What will the benefits be?

At the heart of the Yoosk concept lays the vision of improving the accountability of those who serve and inspire us. And for the media and those in the public eye, it is a means to manage mass e-communications with greater authenticity and transparency.

We meet the criteria in the following way:

1. Yoosk enables people to put questions directly to public figures on key issues, vote on other questions they want to see answered, comment on both questions and answers and ask follow up questions- building a conversation with that public figure. This will not only aid accountability, but may actually help change minds among our representatives.

2.Although we have been going for over a year, our approach is still highly innovative and has inspired several imitators in the US. We use crowd-sourcing techniques (with Digg-Style voting)to rank questions, widgets and a (soon to be launched)Facebook application to gather questions.We have an advanced CMS that allows anyone to set up and manage their own Yoosk domain and we have a citizen media feature that enables users to submit their own issues-based interview proposals. Finally, the public figures themselves can submit questions directly to webcam.

3.Some political websites (e.g. Webcameron, The PM's You Tube site) enable users to submit questions to key individuals and view their answers on video. None do so systematically and allow large scale conversations to take place. There is no reason why every single councillor and MP should not be on one of the Yoosk domains by the end of 2009.

4.The project already has the ability to be scaled to the local or regional level- we are actively seeking partners to help us do that. Any organisation can use Yoosk, including the private sector (for corporate governance and internal communications), third sector (for raising awareness of key issues and holding influencers to account). We are already having conversations with a number of potential partners and some of these are well advanced.

5. We have already had a number of leading politicians answer the public on Yoosk. We believe that when we reach critical mass, we will do nothing short of change the way the public communicate with those we elect to lead us. We expect to reach this critical mass (with the help of this fund) in a given geographical area and hopefully government department next year, thereby proving the concept beyond doubt.

6. The project will be sustainable -through funds from media partners and government clients.

Who will you target?

For public figures and for the Yoosk CMS:
Parliament, political parties, individual MPs, Ministries, Cabinet Office, Local governement officers and councillors, civil society organisations and the corporate CSR sector.

For users:
Local and national media organisations, members of social network websites and members of advocacy and campaign groups.

The widgets and facebook applications will drive traffic to the public figures pages on yoosk.

Is your idea linked to a particular town or region?

no, it is a concept that is universally applicable to any town, region, or indeed country.

What kind of assistance would you like from others?

We have financed this entirely from our own pockets without revenue for over a year, so we urgently need funding. We need people to pilot Yoosk within their government organisations and we need as many public figures as possible to step up and agree to answer questions!

Comments

[Helen Cammack (Niggle Ltd) on 11 August 2008 at 11:37 PM]

I really love what you guys are doing and I'm sure there's a route to revenue eventually from media partners but I'd support your application in the meantime.

Speaking with my TextYourMP hat on, I wonder whether there might be text message applications which would support and complement what you're doing.

I would imagine our TextYourMP initiative being used primarily for indicating support for a campaign, rather than for asking questions, so I don't think there's a direct link. However, I think easy access to an SMS shortcode, and the ability to quickly convert the text messages to an internet feed, might be of benefit to your business.

For example, if a small radio station were broadcasting an interview in conjunction with Yoosk, you might offer listeners an SMS number & code for the interview, so that you can get instant listener reaction and further questions "in the running". EG. "Text PURNELL plus your question or reaction to 64445". That way, the radio show can be even more interactive, and involve people without access to a PC.

Since SMS shortcodes are very expensive to rent (£1k per month is quite usual), and renting codes on other people's SMS numbers in such a flexible way is also likely to be prohibitively expensive for a pre-revenue business, perhaps if both our ideas get funded you could "piggyback" on our shortcode. A good way of making the Fund's money stretch a bit further? Let me know if this would be interesting and perhaps we can support each other's applications.