Opinsy Launches Beta To Create The ‘Opinion Graph’

Ankur Shah was a co-founder of the Techlightenment company which was acquired by Experian, the credit reporting service. But he’s now onto new and interesting things. That project now launches as Opinsy, a new platform which, broadly speaking, enables people to build communities and followings around their opinions, beliefs and ideas. Opinsy breaks cover as an invite only beta today. The launch is ironically timed and ‘on trend’ – we saw the launch of Menshn only last week, and Amen is the hot mobile app around strong opinions right now.

Now, clearly it’s going to be hard to bring something new to this kind of party when Facebook and Twitter dominate public conversations so much.

But we’ve been given a sneak preview and the site is very visual and pretty social. The idea is to visualise the people that agree or those who disagree, creating a central place for those opinions, with active discussions and to share those on social networks. Opinsy is heavily integrated into both Facebook and Twitter.

Shah tells me that “We felt that places like Facebook pages and Likes weren’t, for example, the appropriate forum for global events like the Arab Spring, which needed a more focused place to express all the micro-views that took place during that immense time of change. … We’d prefer to be the YouTube of Opinions rather than a niche site of specific views. We’re about all opinions.”

Sites like Pinterest and Fancy have done this for imagery and products, Opinsy will do this for opinions and beliefs says Shah.

He says he plans to create the ‘opinion graph’ not the social graph.

Partnerships with media companies and an iPad app are also in the cards.

The team consists of about 5 people, is based out of London and is part of an ideas factory Shah is setting up called Wushi Labs.