Need help making a decision? Have an answer to share?

Get a Shrugh!

The Concept: Shrugh is (well, going to be!) a social decision making community. With Shrugh, people get help making better and faster decisions in a fun, entertaining, and viral way. Shrughers can ask questions - called shrughs - which can be as simple as "Which restaurant should I try?" or as complex as "What are the pros & cons of going to University of Colorado next fall?".

Shrughs can be shared with the Shrughiverse (thanks Bob!), where decisions are proposed, chosen, ranked, rated, and discussed by Shrughies! They can be left open or closed when you have reached a decision or time has run out. Your shrugh is linked to related shrughs to help you tap in to the collective wisdom of the Shrughiverse. Shrughers can also use a tag cloud, searches, and RSS feeds to discover interesting shrughs and decisions. As the number of shrughs on the site grows they will be categorized too.

Shrughers earn points for their participation in the community. For instance, Beth, an expert in Animal Welfare, has earned lots of points for her highly valued participation on animal-related shrughs (thanks Beth!). Initially, these points simply indicate the shrugher's stature in the community. In the future, they may be used as a reward system with prizes or other enticements.

A Shrugher's user profile can be linked to other social networking sites. Release 1 will likely include Facebook and Twitter integration. The primary user for Shrugh is a late teen to young adult (30ish), male or female, Web native, and who participates in at least one other social network like MySpace, Facebook, or Twitter. This population solicits and values feedback from peers and have difficulty making decisions. The tools Shrugh provides will help these individuals become better decision makers and develop analytic thought processes - all in a fun and productive environment.

We need your help! Here is a short scripted "demo" of the Shrugh concept. Take a look and don't forget to leave your comments at the end. You can also send us your comments by twittering us @shrugh, emailing info@shrugh.com or jumping right to the Shrugh Feedback form.

11/23/2008 Update! We've created a short demo of responding to a shrugh. Test it out here (it is really short) and tell us what you think.

11/26/2008 Update! Now we have a demo showing how to create a shrugh based on the feedback we've received. Test it out and let us know you think.

(oh yeah, this is Rev 2.1 of this page)