Thats Interesting

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Helium – All Hail The Knowledge Economy

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The floodgates have opened. People do not have to be ignorant, but potentially valuable contributors. Wikipedia showed the way in the user generated content space, followed by a slew of question-answer sites (see our article weekend with wikis), bookmarking sites and now it’s a live reference site called Helium (based in Andover, Massachusetts) thats stirring things up.

The Boston independent influence is clear, Helium is on a quest to improve the quality of knowledge online. It works like this – there are user contributed articles on a subject, visitors read them and rate them. The highest ranked article goes to the top and the authors get paid via advertising revenue. Articles are chosen to reflect different viewpoints on the topic, making it very easy to get a complete picture of the issue. Helium has also introduced Helium Debate -its unique peer-review rating process to improve quality of debate on any topic. Helium Debate allows users to submit a debate topic of their choice as either a pro or con position. The result is an ordered list of pro arguments presented against an ordered list of con arguments on any subject. The best argument for each side of the debate, according to a jgroup of peers, rises to the top.

Techcrunch seems convinced - “It’s an interesting model that’s proved more compelling than I thought it would once I started using it.”

Helium hopes to rope in serious writers and academics, so that users actually benefit from well thought out and well informed ideas, rather than scan through pages of half baked comments!

Mercextra puts it neatly:

“The blogosphere is full of threads where people insult each other as much as possible. Helium is trying to bring a little civility and objectivity back to the conversation.”

Word From Helium – Our Chat With Them

Where did the initial idea for Helium come from?

Helium was founded on October 10, 2006 and is on a quest to build the best user-contributed reference there is. Helium is the first to take the strengths of a user-contributed content site, knowledge-sharing and multiple points of view, and apply the ordering capabilities of a peer-review ranking system to make it easy for a consumer to gain insight quickly from subjective content.

Helium is an advocate for the writer in all of us. Helium provides an outlet for anyone to share what they know – on virtually any subject matter. Helium’s audience provides recognition to the writer. In addition, feedback from like-minds is provided on submitted pieces through Helium’s patent-pending peer-review and quality ranking process.

How would you define Helium as a brand?

Helium is for everyone. It’s a directory of real-world knowledge, powered by people like you. Helium encourages people to write about their passions, interests and experiences. It is like a marketplace of knowledge.

There are three elements that are at Helium’s core:

Writing

• Instant Audience: Millions waiting to read YOUR point of view.
• Sharing is satisfying. It feels good to mentor.
• When you share, Helium shares back, with cash earned from advertising.
• Make money posting on favorite topics.

Rating

• You be the judge: Compare A to B, decide which article is better. Be part of the Wisdom of Many.
• Through many ratings by many people, quality rises.

Finding

• Way Beyond Search: Real advice from real people, on a wide variety of topics.

How does Helium encourage visitors to use RSS technology?

Right now, there are RSS feeds at the bottom of every page, of every channel. Users can subscribe to the feed and get an up-to-date list of all the articles in a given channel. In the upcoming rev of the site, there will be RSS feeds to specific story leads, by category. Also, prolific writers at Helium will have RSS feeds to their articles.

How does the spirit of competition help improve the user experience at Helium?

There is a lot of friendly and fun competition at Helium. Every article is rated for quality by the cooperative member community, and this encourages people to write articles to the best of their ability. We like to term this concept “coopertition.” It feeds off the innate desire to be number one.

So far, what are the most popular subjects and categories?

Some hot topics right now range from popular culture (American Idol), to sports (Stanley cup playoffs), to philosophy

What type of characteristics do you look for in potential employees?

At Helium, we are a small, tight-knit team. We are also a startup, which means everyone has to pitch in to make our website outstanding. So, it is important that every employee at Helium be a team player and willing to dive in and get the job done.

Helium is hot or not? Our take on it.

We used Helium to check out their take on online job hunting. It was a thumbs up vote. Not only was the section delineated into employers, online jobs, etc., there was no dearth of either information or advice. Many wrote from personal experience, some were responses to questions raised in earlier articles…there were links to other sites and blogs as well. Like our researcher put it “it was like an organized search for people who don’t have much time.” Bitten by the poker bug? Helium had some insightful articles on the game. I will be using Helium as a supplement to Wikipedia for research.

Posted by Sally Richardsson       Posted at 02:17AM May 02, 2007 by Sally Richardsson   


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