Jelly has long been an app I’ve been interested in, but at the same time I’ve questioned its viability as a stand-alone service since Twitter especially is already the network people turn to when they have questions needing answers. Now it looks like the team is working to bring value to both.

jelly-relaunch

A new integration with Twitter allows questions to be ported directly over to Jelly when you use #askjelly in the Tweet containing the question you’re looking to have answered. So “What’s the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? #askjelly” will be pulled automatically over to Jelly including pictures, where the community there can see and answer the question. And when they reply, the answer will come back to you as an @ reply on Twitter.

That makes a ton more sense than trying to sustain Jelly as its own network, where user adoption and monetization are the ultimate priorities. This way, Jelly can be a valueable add-on to Twitter while also kind of its own thing off to the side, with a core user base that sees unique value in it being there (particularly the anonymous nature of asking a question, making it a safe space for difficult topics) while still showing off what it can do to the mass audience.

Of course getting people to add “#askjelly” to their Tweets to derive any of that value is still a substantial bridge to cross. But this is a step in the right direction, I think.