Yoosk is exploring the participatory media space, inviting the public to submit questions to put to high profile public figures. But the site has ambitions far beyond that, aiming to pioneer a collaborative news process that they hope to develop with established news sites.
Yoosk is run by three full-time staff working from London, the Midlands and Vietnam, where the site's developers are based. It is self-funded, just 11 months old and has big plans.
Co-founder Tim Hood gives us his elevator pitch.
Yoosk co-founders Tim Hood and Keith Halstead
• Explain your business to my Mum. And in no more than 140 characters.
"Online magazine format where users interview famous people and rate their answers. DIY version of Question Time - the audience chooses the panel and the questions."
• How do you make money?
"Primarily though business to business. We are offering licenses and a managed service, and plan to grow Yoosk as a branded online magazine format and database of public figures and questions -something that can be integrated into existing news sites. We think this is the quickest way to achieve scale, rather than trying to build traffic to the stage where we get enough advertising revenue to fund growth.
• What's the weirdest business experience you've had so far?
"Watching this Fox16 news review of Yoosk, made shortly after we launched. I'm not sure how we made it on to TV in Arkansas in our first few weeks. It's almost a pastiche of US news reporting but a great description of the site and we are very grateful!"
• What's your background?
"I previously worked as a director of a British Council office overseas. My involvement in a number of intercultural dialogue projects got me hooked on the empowering nature of user generated content and citizen involvement in the media.
"Keith, my partner, has been making documentaries in Vietnam for the last few years and is very committed to helping ordinary people tell their own stories.
"We initially conceived of Yoosk as a way to allow the disempowered in poorer countries to put questions to remote leaders in the West. We still have that idealism, but we have decided to concentrate on building it from the bottom up at a local and national level first."
• How many users do you have now, and what's your target within 12 months?
"We have over a thousand visitors per day now - obviously it is early days. Our target within the next 12 months is more in terms of partnerships, which in turn will determine traffic.
"We are looking for a national news partner (we'll manage the service allowing their users to ask questions of public figures via their site) and also plan to set up local and niche sites through partnerships- a politics.yoosk, a birmingham.yoosk, a football.yoosk and a celebrity.yoosk."
• If you had £10m to invest in another web business, what would you invest in?
"Last.fm are an inspiration and I would trust those guys with my £10m - as long as the original team stay in charge now that CBS have put in 140 million.
"I'd have a close look at TIOTI (tapeitofftheinternet) who are aiming to do with TV and film what Last.fm have done with music. But of course, if Last plan to take their model to video, then TIOTI will find it tough going.
"In terms of new media sites, I'd go for Topix, which I think has the most scaleable and durable model - far more so than Newsvine and Nowpublic, which have also recently attracted a lot of investment.
"Garlik.com, an ID theft security site, are bound to do good business as long as our state is so lax with our secrets."
• What's your biggest challenge?
"Proving the concept has been our biggest challenge initially. Would public figures deign to answer the public directly, would anybody post intelligent questions?
"There was also a chicken and egg situation - would the interviewees answer if we didn't have sufficient traffic and would we get sufficient traffic if we couldn't deliver and get answers to the questions posted?
"We've gone some way to proving the concept now but high level public figures still sniff at our numbers and are reluctant to answer because we are small. That's ok - the traffic will come in time and at least we know that people do want to ask and that public figures will answer.
"Our biggest challenge now is to get the partnerships established in a way that proves profitable and to launch next set of interactive features we plan for the site. And to get answers from the people who actually run the country."
• Who is your competition?
"10questions.com is the nearest we have to a direct competitor as a website, although they are in a different market and at the moment focused mainly on the US Presidential elections.
"Topix and Pluck are competitors in terms of providing social media and interactive news platforms and applications that can be incorporated into a newspaper's website."
• Where do you want the company to be in five years?
"Our websites and applications will be used by media at local, national and international level all over the world.
"Our concept of collaborative and crowd sourced interviews, interview feedback and interview question databases will have established itself as part of the next generation of interactive news and comment features.
"In the process we'll have done a lot to make public figures more accountable and to promote participation in the democratic process."
• Are you the next big thing?
"We believe our concept - a mix of citizen journalism and what we call 'news interplay' - will be the next big thing in news, in the same way reality TV shows were once the next big thing in TV entertainment.
"In Web 2.0 terms, we will certainly not be the next You Tube or Facebook. But in its own area, I think we have an innovation that is unique (I use that word with humility and await correction!) and very much of the times - I believe there will soon be a second wave of interactive news features and we very much hope to be riding that wave.
"I say we are unique not because there is anything new about audiences asking famous people questions, or about the crowd sourcing concept for that matter, but because we do have a very original way of combining interactive news features.
"To my knowledge only 10questions.com are doing something similar (around the US presidential race). So I believe we'll be the next big thing in the niche area of interactive news."
What do you think? Does it have legs? Is it hot, or not?
