App for journalists: Questions, the video Q&A app

Devices: iPhone and iPad

Cost: Free

What is it: This app reinvents the questions-and-answer-style format by allowing users to contribute by video.

How is it of use to journalists: Questions – Ask and Answer, uses video to make Q&As much more engaging.

To ask a question users must register using Facebook and post a short (up to 10 seconds) video clip of themselves asking a question.

The Questions community – displayed as a sort of 'selfie wall' – then responds to your clip with their own mini-videos. You can also share questions by Twitter, Facebook or email.


Credit: Screenshot from Questions – Ask and Answer

Unlike Jelly, the image-focussed Q&A app which launched last week, with Questions you can search for queries by keywords and categories such as sports, science and culture, as well as sort them by popularity and newness.

And while it must be said that most of the questions we found were fairly trivial – for example, "Would you rather be a rock star or a famous actor?" – there might be scope for journalists to use the app more constructively to experiment with different ways of curating or crowdsourcing content.

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