Fluther

Fluther operated as a social question-and-answer platform, founded in 2007 by Ben Finkel and Andrew McClain. The company's name, "Fluther," is the technical term for a group of jellyfish, chosen to reflect the collective nature of its community. Based in San Francisco, the venture secured $600,000 in funding to develop its service.

The platform was designed as a free Q&A website that incorporated features of a social network. A distinguishing characteristic was its matching algorithm, which directed users' questions to other members of the community deemed to have relevant expertise based on their site activity. This system aimed to provide fast, high-quality answers. The service emphasized real-time interaction, creating a chat-room-like experience for each question. To maintain a high level of discourse, Fluther relied on a team of volunteer moderators and an internal reputation system based on "lurve" scores, rather than external incentives. Users could also access the service via a dedicated iPhone web application.

In December 2010, the five-person Fluther team was acquired by Twitter. This transaction was characterized as an "acqui-hire," with Twitter's primary interest being the engineering and design talent behind Fluther, rather than the Q&A product itself. The Fluther team was tasked with improving content discovery on the Twitter platform. Following the acquisition, Fluther.com continued to operate as an independent entity, supported by a community manager, though no further development was undertaken. At the time of the acquisition, the site claimed to attract over one million unique monthly visitors.

Keywords: social Q&A, question-and-answer, online community, knowledge sharing, expert sourcing, user-generated content, acqui-hire, content discovery, real-time answers, community moderation, Ben Finkel, Andrew McClain, Twitter acquisition, social networking, expertise matching, mobile Q&A, Fluther, online discussion, knowledge base, collective intelligence