And now a new social network, Knotch, gives people an opportunity to express nothing but opinions, and to do it in a way that leaves little ambiguity about how they feel about a particular topic.
The company has created something that one of its founders, Anda Gansca, calls a “feeling thermometer” — a visual tool that allows people to quickly register their opinion about something by selecting a color ranging from bright red (extremely positive) to dark blue (extremely negative), with nine other shades of feeling in between. Although Knotch still has only a small audience — in the tens of thousands, according to Ms. Gansca — its mobile app has intrigued a number of well-heeled Silicon Valley investors, from whom the company has just raised $1.5 million in new funding.