Apps

New app from Klout: What is Cinch?

Klout released a new app to help answer your questions in a Cinch

I was notified via email that I had been ‘selected’ to try out a new app from Klout called Cinch.

Before Cinch, there was Klout Experts. If you ever log into the Klout app, you’ll notice it will sometimes ask you questions. Klout launched Klout Experts in order for users to continuely realize their influence. Klout Experts enabled influencers and all Klout users to directly respond to questions posed in their areas of ‘expertise’. But where are the answers? They are released thanks to Bing in a partnership built between the influence company and the search engine.

Klout Experts wasn’t around for too long and Klout realized it was a big success. While I have shared a few answers on Experts, not all were well thought out and long-winded. Some were just plain sarcastic.

Here is just an example of how the questions are asked:

 

Screen grab of questions from the Klout app on iPhone

Screen grab of questions from the Klout app on iPhone

Okay, already… but what is Cinch?

Sorry, got long-winded there. Cinch is Klout’s answer to the millions of users who want to share their knowledge in their area of expertise. Instead of answering little questions in Klout with Experts, Cinch was created as an app for iOS.

The goal of Cinch is to allow people to get advice quickly about lifestyle-related questions (home improvement, fashion, parenting, etc.)

And you can bet your Klout score will be tied to how much you feed Cinch. And I could use it. I recently pontificated about the drop in my Klout score after I took a month-long hiatus from the web. The rebound hasn’t been nearly as easy as I thought.

In the end, Cinch might just help you build your score…but more importantly, and as the developers set out to do, help people in dire need of information and make it easy for them, a cinch to figure out.

But wait, I can’t log into Cinch!

I can’t either. I would have really loved to give the app a test drive, but I have not been able to log in since I received the notification it was available more than two weeks ago.

 

IMG_4511

I’ve gotten this message a dozen times. I deleted the app twice and reinstalled. I received an email from Cinch (without contacting them) telling me they were working on the error and a new update will be released next week.

 

At the login screen, it asks to connect with your Facebook login. Every time I try, I get an error. I deleted the app, deleted the Facebook app and reinstalled both. Still no go. I tried all of that again. Surely there was an explanation for why it wasn’t working.

Nope.

Then I deleted Cinch because I was disgusted it wasted so much of my time. But that’s when a strange thing happened. After I deleted it, I got an email from a Brian Lane apparently from Operations at Cinch. It read:

Hi Josh,

Thank you so much for downloading Cinch. I’m afraid that there’s an issue affecting your login, which is why you weren’t able to connect. We’re working to fix the issue on our end, and I just wanted to apologize to you for the inconvenience. We should have a fix out in our next version of the app store- which should be available late next week. Thank you so much for your understanding as we work on this issue.

Best regards,

Brian

(Operations at Cinch)

So I’m out of luck until next week. Kudos for Cinch for getting a hold of me and telling me what’s going on. But too bad they didn’t do the testing to prevent such a screw-up that has me even wondering why I wasted so much time trying to get it to work. I like the concept and most likely will use Cinch when I can. I will update this post accordingly when the update comes out and give a summary of the app.

If you are one of the lucky ones who got it to work, tell us about it in the comments. Does it find what you’re looking for? What’s good and bad?

Josh Benson

Josh Benson

Josh is the Editor of GeekLift.com and supreme geek to boot. He spends much of his time learning new software, coding languages, gadgets and more. He loves helping people figure out tech problems - big or small. Josh is a former television news anchor and tech reporter. He spends his days developing websites and producing videos.

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