A new tool to assist the independent contractors and mom 'n' pop design businesses of the world just went into beta testing this week. Blellow, which opened up on March 3rd, combines a "Twitter like" messaging format with a "group" organizational structure to allow users to seek out help from other subject matter experts for their projects. Full roll out is targeted for SXSW where they are a sponsor at the Mashable + Blurb Bash. Think of it as a "Smart Twitter" that fosters the building of coopetitional relationships as opposed to a "slice of life" personal update.
Blellow seems to be a more serious candidate for supporting collaboration than Twitter. Additional features include a job board for hired positions, a freelance board for independent work, and a project board for posting "one time only" needs. Attaching files to Blellow posts is an extremely helpful feature and helps to reduce clutter in posts as well as possibly saving an additional trip to a wiki. For example, I attached a file called "samplecode.txt" with one of my posts for review which other users can access to help spot check for errors.
I tried out the project posing feature as I needed some help with some Flash customization for one of my customers. This morning when I checked I had 4 replies. Not bad given this is only in beta.
Blellow also provides a way to grade the quality of the help received from other users via a "kudos" system. If @mandi helps me through a problem I can award her a kudo in the form of points. These points accumulate providing an overall rating for that user. The more kudos the more help has been given. That total is displayed on my profile. I'm not sure if this will be a true gauge of quality, but moreover one of quantity of action since it is a total and not an average rating.
I am still in the process of working through the site and trying to learn how each feature works. As any beta version, there are a few small bugs that are being worked out. Blellow seems committed to this process and has a form for providing feedback on the site via an orange button displayed prominently on every page. The Blellow staff is also actively watching the posts and giving updates on their status. There is also the usual blog / forum to look for answers to questions related to use or post opinions.
The informational video below gives a good demonstration of how the freelance would utilize Blellow for help.
I think there is great promise in this tool and I look forward to full release. So far I haven't seen anyone post "I'm having my morning coffee" or "It's a beautiful day in sunny ATL" yet so I'm hoping that trend will continue. After all, I still have Twitter to feed my narcissism!
Bill Cooey
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