July 5th, 2011, By Dana Haugh
Ever heard of lazyweb? If you’re not a Twitter user or if you rely solely on search engines to get your information, you probably haven’t. But for those hardcore tweeters out there, lazyweb is just another tool at your disposal for finding answers to questions you’re “too lazy” to search for on Google. It’s been dubbed “Google 2.0” by some because of its “revolutionary” way of providing responses to your deepest, darkest questions. The revolutionary part about it is—get this—humans are responding to you! That’s right. It’s like going back to the days when you used to ask friends and family for advice, before the Internet was born and restricted your contact with the outside world. Yes, lazyweb is technically an Internet resource, but instead of wading through every article containing a word in the question you “asked,” lazyweb gives you an answer based on real, live people’s opinions. If there’s one thing search engines can’t do, it’s provide you with “emotional” answers to inqueries such as “what are the best nightclubs to visit in San Diego” or “who are the Yankees playing this weekend.”
Thus, we are given a new way of getting answers– one that allows for personal taste, variations in semantics and contextual backgrounds. From a professional standpoint, it gives you the opportunity to connect with other professionals (brokers, landlords etc.) to get their opinions on the best areas for development or great locations for starting a business. This personalized questionnaire can give you an insider’s perspective on a market you’re not familiar with, as well as connect you with surrounding executives, creating relationships through questions. Instead of the “generic” list of available spaces from the local broker, you could potentially find spaces and gather information that might only be privy to locals in the area. Lazyweb could become the next big way to avoid paying big companies to generate “general property lists,” relying instead on human connection and advice; it could make the commercial real estate world personal again. Think of the possibilities!
So, how does this personal Q&A work? Well right now it’s limited to Twitter users who ask questions ending with the hashtag #lazyweb—signaling
followers to respond with their own unique experiences or advice. And it usually helps if you have over 100 followers, as more people are likely to respond to your question. But despite the tool’s “limited accessibility,” it presents the World Wide Web with a new technique, geared toward the personal user. It highlights one of the major drawbacks in generic searches, and with any luck, lazyweb will help foster some new ideas for answering the world’s endless questions.
All information gathered from Fast Company Design