To qooh or not to qooh

And while we are still trying to make our way through this rigmarole where many of the younger users dont necessarily share the same anxieties as the older generations,leading to a lack of dialogue,there is a new thing that has emerged online which complicates things even more. It is called Qooh. If you havent heard of it already,be ready to hear youngsters asking each other to Qooh me just like we have all already started saying Facebook me or Skype me. Qooh is a South African service that is making its rounds around the interwebz and promising to be the next big thing where the cool kids on the block are hanging out.

Qooh is a chat-like service that invites people to ask questions of a person,without necessarily revealing their identity. So if you have a Qooh account,you can ask your friends,or indeed,random strangers to ask you questions that you may then decide to answer or not. The people who are asking the questions dont need to identify themselves unless they want to. The person,who is being asked the questions,is in control of which questions they want to answer and which of them they want to make public. You also have the option of integrating your Qooh account with other networks like Facebook or Twitter,thus adding a new layer of information disclosure to these already burgeoning spaces.

Qooh works because it gives users more control over privacy and how they disclose personal information over the social web. But more than that,there are some interesting uses that it can be put to. Especially as social networks are insisting on being authentic in our representations online,tying up personal,private and public personas,reducing spaces where one can be anonymous in expression,spaces like Qooh can be the new space to be safe and yet have opinions which can be expressed freely. For young users of digital technologies,who are often the target of cyber-bullying because of unconventional views or preferences,this can be a safe haven. It allows them to express their ideas,connect with other people online,reveal their personal lives and thus engage in social transactions without putting themselves in danger.

One can easily see the value that a platform like Qooh has in public interaction with governments. It enables the public to safely ask anonymous questions to public leaders and government officials about concerns that they might have. Because the person being questioned has control over what questions are made public,there is also reduced trolling and spamming,and might result in a safe public sphere where people are able to engage responsibly and securely in public discourse.

Qooh might also become an influential tool for research that seeks to harvest public opinion. Without disclosing the identity of people,it allows them to vote for things that they care for and express themselves to give more real and subjective opinions around different subjects. It might also become a great tool for public policy crafting,giving us a sense of peoples intentions and desires without the danger of discrimination or profiling.

For me,more than anything else,Qooh is the return of an old meme from the early days of Web 2.0 where,in closed groups online,people often revealed parts of themselves they wouldnt otherwise. If you have been around the interwebz long enough,you will recall those memes The A To Z meme,where you chose a word with each letter that is important to you. Or there was the 40-question tag,where you answered fairly personal questions and in the spirit of reciprocity,tagged other friends in the social circle to answer the same. Qooh takes it up one notch,harnessing the energies of the social web and the conditions of anonymity to offer a new layer of interaction that promises to be fun and an essential part of digital relationships.

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