Twitter Co-Founder Defends His Overhyped New Thing

For nearly a year famous person Biz Stone has dramatically teased us with his mysterious new app. He told us the app's name -- Jelly -- and little else.

The tech world grew giddy with anticipation. Stone, you see, is one of the cofounders of Twitter -- another app with a funny name. It's now worth billions.

Finally, on Tuesday Stone let us in on the secret. And Jelly turns out to be a ... a search engine?

Sort of.

Jelly is a new, free question and answer app for iPhones and Android phones. The app allows you to ask friends and friends-of-friends questions. You connect Jelly with your Facebook or Twitter account (or both) and then you take a photo and ask a related question.

The Huffington Post spoke to Stone by phone on Tuesday and asked him about the hype around his app, which has intensified in the months since he wrote a mysterious, vague blog post announcing his new venture.

Stone was modest about the all the publicity: "Because of Twitter I've gained notoriety, so that's given it a boost," Stone told HuffPost in an interview. "It's a blessing and a curse, because when we've been working on it we couldn't do it without anyone watching."

Jelly is also backed by some big names, including Bono, Al Gore, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Twitter co-founders/entrepreneurs Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams. The company is still small (there are eight employees) but Stone expects the app to be profitable, since, as he says, it's "a new way to search" and search is a good business to be in.

Sure, it's a good business to be in theoretically, but it's a business that belongs to Google. If Jelly wants to challenge Google, it would have to revolutionize search.

Here's how Jelly works: Say you're walking along and see a building your don't recognize. With Jelly, you would take a photo of the building and upload it, asking "What is this building?" In theory, at least one of your friends or someone in your extended friend group would know the answer and respond to you. People need to have Jelly to be able to see and answer questions, but you can forward a question to someone who doesn't have Jelly if you want his or her help.

Original post here Technology on HuffingtonPost.com