My Mosaic Life: Bellow. Leveraging the Wisdom of Crowds.

Being a geek in technology, I discovered Blellow a few months back.

I was intrigued and wanted to check it out.

What is Blellow?

Blellow, a social network allowing freelancers and professionals to collaborate, find work, and solve problems through a friendly, familiar micro-blog interface by answering the question: “What are you working on?”

Blellow is a San Antonio based bootstrapped start-up. Their mission is to encourage open collaboration and the sharing of knowledge.

They base their mission on three principals:

Knowledge is meant to be shared.

While there are many tools for learning, the best resources are each other.

Perception and perspective will provide solutions and inspire new ideas.

When you offer a problem to a group of minds sharing knowledge, perception opens up discussion and perspective offers up solutions.

Organization is the key to productivity

Ideas can never reach their full potential if they cannot be heard.

Blellow Beta just launched earlier this week. I've since signed up and here are my thoughts:

1. Design is GREAT.

CEO Mandy Leeman has been a designer since the age of 11 when she formed her first graphic design business, called Cosmic Donkey – specializing in business cards and printed flyers. So...when it comes to great design - I'm not surprised. Plus she has really awesome blue colored hair. Love it!

2. Usability is SIMPLE.

They kept it simple which is great. They also followed the Twitter model, which is familiar. One my favorite features is the ability to write up to 300 characters. That is really nice! The one request I do have is I'd like to easily see who I'm not following. I found after signing up I had quite a few followers - but wasn't sure who was new and who I'd already followed.

3. Community is AWESOME.

So far the community is great. Collaboration and really cool conversations are already happening. I remember being self-employed, sitting at home alone, wishing I knew someone who could help me with a coding situation. With a site like Blellow - you're not alone! Just post a question in your stream and find like minded people who can help. You can even start or join groups and attend local meetups. Very cool!

4. Potential is HUGE.

I think Blellow has huge potential. With the current economy, I think many people will be starting to venture on their own working independently. With Blellow, you are not alone. Need a designer, engineer or writer - check Blellow.

Here's an awesome video that explains it perfectly: