The Idea Behind Moodler, The Mood Graph Microblog

We previously featured Moodler, an India based micro-blogging platform which tracks the mood of your social network.

It is an innovative social platform that generated a lot of positive feedback from our readers. The Moodler team was really thankful as well. On our part, we’re glad to help spread good start-up ideas from Asia across the world.

So, as curious as most readers are, we went ahead further to explore what’s behind and ahead of Moodler’s plan. We’re glad to learn more from co-founder, Siddharth S Kumar. Catch his short interview below:

1. I understand that Moodler is under Pixelkraft. Care to explain what Pixelkraft does and how Moodler fits in its overall strategy?

PixelKraft is a media solutions company at the crossroads of branding, design and technology. Our consulting work for brands frequently gives us unique insights into the constantly evolving consumer/marketplace. We formulate hypotheses based on these insights and use design/technology to create products to test them. Moodler is one such outcome.

2. Could you elaborate how Moodler measures mood? Is it accurate?

It’s a neat, simple system. The mood of every post is measured as a percentage against each emoticon that was used to respond to that post. As far as accuracy goes, it’s as accurate as a ‘show of hands’ for any query. Accurate enough to be useful, I’d say.

3. How do you guys plan to acquire more users? Where do most of your users come from?

We don’t have any preset targets for the moment. We expect Word-of-Mouse marketing to do the initial job because it is a one-of-a-kind of idea. At present, users mostly come from US and India. But over the last couple of weeks, we’re getting lots of sign-ups from South-East Asia.

4. How big is the Moodler team? Who are they and what are their roles?

We’re a 20 member, multi-skilled, closely-knitted team. We have some pre-defined roles such as UI Designer, Architect etc. but on something as innovative as Moodler, my team members usually go beyond their designated roles.

5. Any idea how you guys are going to monetize Moodler?

We have some pointers here. Moodler is incredibly useful as a snap-polling system and as we speak, we’re in the process of creating some products using the Moodler platform. I suspect we will make our money there. Of course, we will also be able to license the platform for set-top boxes for real-time polling on television and of course, Internet television.

6. What are some of the obstacles met when creating Moodler?

The problems were largely about fine-tuning the central idea. It had to be truly original. We had to be careful about not creating a ‘me-too’ product. The world simply doesn’t need another Twitter or Facebook. It’s when we finally created the ‘mood graph’ we knew we had something unique in our hands.

7. Any future plans for Moodler?

Lots of them, actually. But in short, we want to make Moodler the de facto choice for polling or moodwatching for anything that happens on the Internet, across various devices and platforms.

This interview was first published on Penn-Olson, a tech, business and marketing blog focusing on US and Asia. Penn-Olson is a Young Upstarts content partner.