How much do you really know a person? How well do you know your Twitter friends, or even your colleagues? In many cases, conversations are often limited to very casual and superficial topics. But a popular new web service in Japan is trying to help you get know know people a little better. It’s called The Interviews, and it is a fast-growing Q&A service for personal use that has taken off in Japan.
Just a few weeks after its release, its per-day page views have surpassed 2 million and it continues to get bigger every day. The service reminds me of Formspring, but in reverse. With Formspring, you decide to reveal certain secrets and facts about yourself that may surprise other people. (i.e. What’s your favorite band? What was the best moment in your college life?)
With The Interviews, people ask each other questions anonymously. The interviewer of a question is never revealed. This works well because there is an online culture in Japan that tends to prefer anonymity. The popularity of 2ch.net is evidence of this, but of course with the rise of sites like Twitter and Facebook, people are becoming more aware of the merits of an open profile. But when it comes to asking questions, anonymity enables people to ask questions that they might not otherwise ask.
All sorts of questions are asked on this new platform. There is a question for the former CEO, asking how he sees the current situation of the company he left. Someone else is asking a girl what she likes most about her boyfriend. The response rate is revealed on each person’s interview page. And so the more you answer, more questions you are likely to receive.
Each user is given their own interview page, listing questions from people and their answers to those questions. It is a detailed profile page that keeps getting updated. There are many convenient features including one that allows users to find people that they follow on Twitter, and also a feature to block certain interviwers.
As of September 1st, the number of registered users is 16,000. The Interviews was created by paperboy&co at it’s development camp.
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