Formspring.me, the question and answer service, has seen their user base pushing the 16 million users mark, and that’s only since they’ve launched. This equates to about one billion questions answered between now and last November.
In common with other early start-ups, the feature list has been a bit light allowing developers time to concentrate on core business but this is set to change. Notably, Formspring is launching connections, allowing users to form connections by answering questions.
This is in contrast to the Twitter / Facebook follow functionality. The system will use weightings to sort connections by ‘strength’ but it’s important to note that it doesn’t work with anonymous questions and answers. More features are planned and some have been developed by third parties.
The iPhone app has been developed by taptivate which may or may not license the application back to formspring, regardless an iPhone presence is sure to boost the site’s user base substantially and an Android app is likely to follow very soon. The site has recently acquired the ability to connect with your friends on Facebook, twitter or MySpace and your contacts can be harvested from your Gmail or yahoo contacts. With these and other features it seems that the company’s mission is expanding from its original “ask my anything” motto.
Although it’s recently been cruised from some quarters who say the site has been used for cyber bullying thanks to its anonymity the user numbers speak for themselves and the user numbers say that Formspring seems to be on the up.
