CHENNAI: A new portal that searches perceptions and opinions has been launched.

Designed and developed to facilitate decision-making and occasionally substituting conventional web search, Tezaa lets people create polls and vote to collectively form social wisdom.

"It's like being in the crowd and knowing their minds too" said 23-year-old Shalin Jain, one of the two developers at the project.

"If you were to buy an MP3 player or choose a hotel for your next travel destination, peer feedback can play an important role in your decision-making process. Everyone likes to get first-hand reports and opinions from others" added Shalin.

Highly inspired by New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki's book 'The Wisdom of the Crowds', Tezaa Project aims at generating social wisdom that will give back to the society.

He said that content is given utmost priority and added that he expects the project to grow at a slow and steady pace in the coming years. “Indirectly, this is an Indian answer to Yahoo Answers.”

“This is one of the web-to-point projects as people are given all importance, as people are the one who moderate,” Jain informed adding that it was the reason for the site to be more and more popular.

Tezaa essentially lets anyone post questions as polls and get opinions from other users on the tezaa community. Polls can be posted on any topic including technology, politics, travel, sports, education, social issues and many others. Unlike traditional forums and question-answer communities on the web, Tezaa banks on objective and summarised information, which is quick and easy to assimilate. Based on an open content concept like Wikipedia, Tezaa depends largely on user-created and moderated content, including features that allow any user to add a new choice to an existing poll.

Tezaa makes it very easy for any one maintaining a website or a blog to add polls to their web pages. It also lets users invite their friends to a specific poll, making it quick to gather opinions from people you already know.

Tezaa is largely search based and information is organised by Tags or Keywords.

"If you were buying a car and were confused by the choices before you, the Tezaa community provides the best and the quickest results. It beats conventional web search which demands that you read a lot of reviews and comparisons before you finally find the answer." remarked Shalin.

Tezaa adds to the growing list of user-driven web 2.0 services like Digg, Wikipedia, etc. that offer effective platform for information sharing while benefiting the society at large.

Anyone can sign up and start participating by creating an account at the Tezaa website. Membership is free and the service is ad-free.


Source:ciol.com

http://www.tezaa.com/