What is Sundew?

According to developer SK Planet, Sundew is a dynamic social Q&A service that is based on your trusted friend network, and it's a recent addition to my iPhone.

Sundew allows users to post questions either publicly or to their friends and contacts on either their phone / Facebook or in Sundew and hope to get an answer. It functions much like if Twitter were an episode of Jeopardy, in that posts should be in the form of a question.

People on the public timeline (or your friends) read your question and then post a helpful answer thus getting you out of your quandary, or helping you to solve #4 down in the crossword or finding somewhere nice to eat in Gwanhwamun.

Things can in fact get pretty granular. People posing questions can give their question a category tag such as film, music, art, sports - the list goes on. This helps users navigate Sundew a little easier. Likewise Users can purport to be interested in certain categories as well and can list the categories they are interested in .

When browsing users can also see all the answers a question has received (and of course add their own answers). If you like a particular answer (or question) you can click the Thumbs Up icon which Sundew has cleverly named the "A Ha!" button. A Ha! being the reaction when you get that answer you've been looking for. Pretty clever indeed!

But A Ha!'s aren't just gratification in the way a Facebook "Like" button is. Users' A Ha!'s are tabulated against the category of the question. The more A Ha!'s you get the more points you get in that category. Receive enough points and you win a badge (like Foursquare) - Rookie through Guru depending on how people like your answers. 

And then there is the game element as well. A Sundew is a carnivorous plant  - like a Venus FlyTrap I guess. Users start off with a Sundew seed and get to grow the seed into a progressively larger and cuter Sundew character depending on how many points they have.

Sundew offers integration with both Twitter and Facebook, and has a reasonably active Facebook group at the moment. Users can customise their settings to see Questions from people "nearby"(requiring Location services to be activated) or "worldwide. The large majority of questions are from Korean speakers - which might be a good way to practise your Korean - but there is a fair number of English language users as well posting questions in English. (So far none in any other language.)

It wouldn't be fair to call out Sundew on the number of server issues it has had in the last couple of weeks since I started using it - it is in a semi-closed beta at the moment (version 1.1 at time of writing), and usually a little bit of patience is all is required. However posting multiple questions all in a row seems to bring the server to it's knees on occasion - something the folks at SK Planet are working on.

Its handling of contacts and invites is a little troublesome though. Beta testers (Of which I am one) were asked to invite their friends. Unfortunately I managed to spam everyone in my address book (Oooops!) and invites aren't really clear what they're for and so are unfortunately pretty much ignored - especially by those people who are savvy enough.

Likewise I have had to be careful with double posting - The default is to both Tweet and Post to Facebook whenever you ask a question. If you have Twitter set up to forward to Facebook and Google+ and for Facebook to forward on to Google+ you end up with one Tweet but several posts on Facebook and Google+. There doesn't seem to be a way (in this version of the app) to choose nothing as the default and then decide whether you want your question Tweeted, Facebooked or both.



Elsewhere your questions and answers are kept under a My Q & A section, but just ends up as an ever growing list where questions seem to get bumped to the top when ever there is some action to do with it (reply, A Ha! etc) - sorting by category might be a good option here. Another good option would be an English version. From v1.1 the interface for the most part and especially notifications have all been in Korean which is a bit maddening for those of us who have limited Korean Skills (although I now know "A Ha!" in Korean is 아하!) Also a counter number on the App for unchecked questions and replies (like the red dot on email and messages etc) would be much preferable to page after page of notifications in the iPhone's Notification area.  

These are all cosmetic concerns of course and could easily be fixed and / or implemented in future updates. What Sundew is lacking at the moment is really a purpose.

The level of discourse and questioning (while fun and clean!) is limited to things like "What should I do today?" and "Butter or Margarine?" and "Coke or Pepsi?". In terms of a game it's quite fun, answer questions, grow your Sundew Character, earn badges. But Sundew has a lot more potential that isn't being met here. Questions and answers should be able to be searched. So If I'm looking for a restaurant I should be able to search for questions and answers like "Best restaurant in Gangnam". Better still using location services I would love to be able to browse questions and answers for this area. Being able to share these questions more easily on Facebook and through Twitter (and maybe being able to plot questions and answers on a Google map) would make Sundew much more useful than it is fun at the moment.

Bimbo rating ★★★✩ 3 1/2 

Sundew is free from The iTunes App Store and Android Market.