What's Qunu... ?

Qunu is about RIGHT NOW! Not in 5 minutes or two hours or 3 days. It is about finding and talking to someone who most likely knows what you don't.

Qunu was originally dreamt up as a way for people to get free, live chat tech support for products, direct from those who were most passionate about those products -- the users themselves. The concept has resonated hugely, and since launch in July 2006 we have amassed thousands of experts donating help sessions in tens of thousands of topic areas, which suggests that Qunu has grown beyond just tech support.

In fact, examination of search and usage patterns suggests that Qunu is reinventing Search itself. Think of Qunu like a search engine that returns people instead of documents -- a mashup of search and instant messaging.

We realized that people love to help, but in ways convenient for them -- which meant integrating directly with existing instant messaging software. This is where all the existing Q&A services were lacking. If you wanted to help out, you needed to visit a site repeatedly or keep a page open all day.

How You Can Help

Do you corner people at parties to tell them about the great software you use? Do you enjoy the warm fuzzy feeling that goes with showing someone the light? Great! We've created this system for people like you!

How to start:

1. Tell us about yourself
	Grab an account and nominate a bunch of tags that you'd like to provide help for. For example, "photoshop", "ajax", or "macbook". When a user does a search on any of those tags, your profile will appear.
2. How it works
	When someone wants to ask you a question, we'll route the request straight to your existing IM program in form of an invitation you can quickly accept or refuse. Qunu will most likely talk to your existing IM software. If it doesn't, here's a list of (multi-protocol) software clients you might like to use to that will let you keep talking to your buddies on AOL/Yahoo/ICQ/MSN.