New App Searches Your Social Graph for the Right Contact [INVITES]

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Name: Knod.es

Quick Pitch: Knod.es searches Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook for the contacts who are likely to have the answer to your question.

Genius Idea: Analyzing public posts to find who frequently discusses a given topic.

Snapgoods is a startup that connects people who want to rent or borrow something with the people in their social networks and neighborhood who are willing to lend it out. As with most new online services, the site makes it easy to reach out to your social graph for help with the task. “Know someone with a tent in New York?” I recently asked my Twitter population from the site. “Will pay up to $50 for three days.”

But it’s unlikely that this posting will result in a tent.

“There’s just such a low conversion, when you sort of push into your stream “hey has anyone ever…? Or, hey, does anyone have a…?” Snapgoods co-founder Ron Williams says.

Williams’s solution, which he and his co-founder put online about six weeks ago, is called Knod.es. Instead of posting an open-ended question to your social feeds, Knod.es helps find the people in your network who would be best to ask. It does this by searching the public activity of your contacts on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

When you search for “tent,” for instance, the web app looks for people who have mentioned tents. It’s also easy to search for people who have talked about and live in a location or who have worked at a specific company. Once you’ve located the appropriate contacts, you can message them all in one swoop — even if they’re not Knod.es users.

The private beta version of the web app was cut off at about 400 users, but its creators are planning on incorporating the technology into the Snapgoods platform and opening up an API for other third-party sites who want to use it. Just as Twilio gets paid by lending its back-end group messaging technology to companies like GroupMe and Fast Society, Knod.es would charge for calls to its API. Williams also sees potential for an independent Knod.es app with a freemium model.

Knod.es is not the first application to help sort the social graph, but it’s take on the problem is slightly different. Aardvark, a Q&A platform that Google purchased in 2010, works your network to find the right answers from the right people, but won’t give you a list of contacts for a given topic like Knod.es does. Sonar shows you how you’re connected with the people in the room, and LinkedIn will map your entire network.

It’s hard to opine on whether or not Knod.es will become the next Twilio while it’s still in what Williams calls “nascent ugly baby form” and private beta, but in the day that I’ve been using it, at the least it has made a handy source finder.

Up to 100 Mashable readers can access the private beta by clicking this link.

Would you use a tool like this in your professional life? What online services do you think would be enhanced with this feature?

Image courtesy of istockphoto, drewhadley

Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

More About: bizspark, knodes, networking, social graph, social media

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