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Brainly

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Brainly.com
Type of businessPrivate
Type of site
Social network service
Available inEnglish, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Turkish, Thai, Romanian, Russian, Polish, Italian, Indonesian
FoundedSeptember 2009
HeadquartersKrakow, Poland, New York, New York
No. of locations2
Key peopleMichał Borkowski, Tomasz Kraus
IndustryEducational Technology
URLbrainly.co
RegistrationNot required
Users60,000,000+
Current statusActive

Brainly is a multinational educational technology company based in Krakow, Poland[1] and New York, New York. Brainly operates a group of social learning networks for students and educators. It is available in 13 languages and has over 60 million unique users monthly from over 35 countries (as of March 2016). The first website launched in 2009[2] in Poland under the name Zadane.pl. Brainly tries to inspire students to share and explore knowledge in a collaborative community, and engage in peer-to-peer educational assistance. The network has elements of gamification in the form of motivational points and encourages users to engage in the online community by asking questions and answering those of other students.[3]

About

Brainly is a social learning community for students that encourages collaborative learning. It is a social media platform strictly connected to education and learning. It uses social networking features to connect users who intend to share their knowledge within the online community.[4] The site is dedicated to Elementary School, Middle School, High School, and College students,[5] as well as teachers, parents and other educators. Each version of Brainly is a free Q&A website customized for each country of operation. The goal is to inspire students to learn within a collaborative environment and expand their knowledge by focusing primarily on homework help. Brainly has 13 versions in 35 countries, which were visited by over 60 million unique users monthly by March 2016.[6] Brainly operates as a desktop website, iOS app and Android apps.

History

Initially called Zadane.pl, the company was founded in 2009 in Poland by Michał Borkowski (current chief executive officer), Tomasz Kraus and Łukasz Haluch. The first million unique users monthly was achieved within 6 months after the release. In January 2011, the company announced Znanija.com, the first international project dedicated to Russian language speakers.[7] Several other versions in multiple languages for the following markets included Turkey (eodev.com), Latin America and Spain (brainly.lat) and Brazil (brainly.com.br). In December 2013, seven new language versions of Brainly were released, include the English language (brainly.com), Indonesian (brainly.co.id), Indian (brainly.in), Filipino (brainly.ph), Thai language (brainly-thailand.com),[8] Romanian (brainly.ro) and Italian (brainly.it) sites. Brainly was initially funded by the co-founders, but then raised funds from Point Nine Capital[9] and Business Angels in 2012.[10][11] In October 2014, the company announced that it had raised another round of funding from General Catalyst Partners, Runa Capital and other venture capital firms.[12] The total amount of the investment was $9 million and allowed further product development, as well as the opening of the US-based headquarters in New York City.[13][14]

In May 2016, another funding round of $18 million of combined debt and equity was disclosed.[15] In June 2016, Brainly acquired the US-based OpenStudy.[16]

Website

General overview

Brainly provides questions and answers for students looking for help with homework-related tasks. They can post questions to the community, who offer help in return. Users may post comments to every question and answer and can freely collaborate on problems.[17] All questions are categorized by subject, respective of country and school level.

Gamification

Each user is given a fixed amount points upon registration, which they can use to ask questions.[18] Points are mainly earned by answering questions, however there are specific activities, which can earn a user additional points. Each respondent is awarded half of the points given by the inquirer for each answer. Additionally, the author of the question gets the chance to choose one of the answers as the best, which awards both the authors of the question and the answer additional points. The website also features rankings (daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly) of users with the highest number of points gained by answering questions respectively to the correct category chosen on the leaderboards. (“Brainliest Users”).

Community interactions

Social interactions between users are concentrated around a few functions of the platform: the chat/private messaging[5] system, comments sections in user profiles and comments sections in the question threads. Whereas the first is used for private conversations between the users, the latter two are utilized for collaboration on questions and social interactions within the community. Each user can create their own network of connections by friending other users.

Moderators

A group of users on the site are given the special designation of Moderator.[19] Moderators are responsible for ensuring that the quality of questions, answers, and social interactions are extremely high on the site. Moderators also assist and guide users through the site and explain how the site works.

References

  1. ^ http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapid=217021518 "Company Overview of Zadane.pl sp. z o.o.", Bloomberg Businessweek, 27 May 2014. Retrieved on 28 May 2014
  2. ^ Adam, Łopusiewicz. http://mamstartup.pl/aktualnosci/4984/54-swiata-do-konca-roku-brainly "54% świata do końca roku - Brainly", Mam Startup, 8 January 2014. Retrieved on 27 May 2014
  3. ^ "Brainly.com - For students. By students". brainly.com. Retrieved 2016-04-18.
  4. ^ https://www.knowledgepool.com/knowledge-centre/social-learning-taster.pdf Social Learning Discoveries Report Autumn 2012
  5. ^ a b Moser, Shay. http://socialmediatoday.com/shaybmoser/2211406/brainly-customer-community-student-support?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Social+Media+Today+%28all+posts%29 "Social Startups: Brainly Is the Customer Community for Student Support", Socialmedia Today, 27 February 2014. Retrieved on 28 May 2014
  6. ^ "Brainly.co - For students. By students". brainly.co. Retrieved 2016-03-07.
  7. ^ Degeler, Andrii. http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/03/17/crowdsourced-school-homework-brainly-plans-take-us-market-success-europe/ "Crowdsourced school homework: How Brainly plans to teach the US after success in Europe", The Next Web, 17 March 2014. Retrieved on 28 May 2014
  8. ^ Millward, Steven. http://www.techinasia.com/crowdsourced-homework-helper-brainly-launches-asia/ "Crowdsourced homework helper Brainly brings the answers to Asia"], Tech in Asia, 15 April 2014. Retrieved on 20 May 2014.
  9. ^ O'Hear, Steve. http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/12/social-learning-network-brainly-raises-500k-from-point-nine-capital-angels/ "Social Learning Network Brainly Raises $500k from Point Nine Capital, Angiels", TechCrunch, 12 September 2012. Retrieved on 28 May 2014
  10. ^ http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/brainly-com
  11. ^ http://www.pointninecap.com/brainly, Point Nine Capital
  12. ^ O'Hear, Steve. "Schoolwork Q&A Site Brainly Scores $9M Series A To Answer The U.S. Expansion Question". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-04-18.
  13. ^ PRNewswire. http://www.cnbc.com/id/102089516#. "Brainly Expands to U.S. with $9M Venture Funding Led by General Catalyst", "CNBC", 15 October 2014. Retrieved on 19 October 2014
  14. ^ CNBC.com, Elaine Pofeldt, special to. "Guess where a big crop of unicorns is coming from". CNBC. Retrieved 2016-04-18.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  15. ^ "Form D: Notice of Exempt Offering of Securities". US Securities and Exchange Commission. 25 May 2016. Retrieved 3 October 2016.}
  16. ^ "Social Learning Platform OpenStudy Joins the Brainly Community". Press release. 14 June 2016. Retrieved 3 October 2016.
  17. ^ Coleman, Alison. http://www.forbes.com/sites/alisoncoleman/2014/05/16/global-ed-tech-disruption-from-poland-crowdsourced-homework/ "Global Ed-Tech Disruption From Poland: Crowdsourced Homework", Forbes, 16 May 2014. Retrieved on 21 May 2014.
  18. ^ Johnson, Thomas. http://recode.net/2014/01/18/brainly-aims-to-bring-social-learning-to-u-s/ "Brainly Aims to Bring Social Learning to U.S.", re/code, 18 January 2014. Retrieved on 28 May 2014
  19. ^ "Who are Moderators?". WHAT DO YOU NEED TO KNOW?. Retrieved 2016-03-07.
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