Brainly

Brainly

Type	Private
Founded	September 2009
Headquarters	Krakow, Poland
Key people	Michał Borkowski, Tomasz Kraus
Slogan(s)	Homework Help
Website	brainly.co
Type of site	Social network service
Registration	Required
Users	40,000,000+
Available in	English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Turkish, Thai, Romanian, Russian, Polish, Italian, Indonesian
Current status	Active

Brainly (Brainly Group, Zadane.pl sp. z o.o.) is a company based in Cracow,Poland,^[1] which operates a group of social learning networks for students and educators. It is available in 13 language versions which are visited by over 40 million unique users monthly from over 35 countries of the world (as of May 2014). This startup company operates in Education Technology. The first website of the group was launched in 2009^[2] in Poland under the name Zadane.pl. The system is based on motivational points and elements of gamification and users may engage in the online community.

About

Brainly is a group of social learning networks based on the common framework. It is one of the social media strictly connected to education and learning. It uses the features of a social network to connect users who intend to share their knowledge and experience with the online community.^[3] The project is dedicated to Elementary School, Middle School and High School students,^[4] as well as teachers, parents and other educators. Each version of Brainly is a free Q&A website customized for the countries it operates in. The goal of the company is to inspire students to learn in collaborative community and explore knowledge by focusing mainly on helping them with homework problems. Since its foundation, Brainly has officially launched 13 versions which are visited by over 40 million of unique users monthly (as of May 2014). The websites reach students in over 35 countries.

Mission Statement

Brainly's mission statement is: "Our mission is to inspire students to learn and explore knowledge in a collaborative community"

History

Zadane.pl sp. z o.o., the company behind Brainly Group, was founded in 2009 in Poland by Michał Borkowski (current CEO), Tomasz Kraus (current CPO) and Łukasz Haluch. The first milestone - 1 million unique users monthly, was achieved within 6 months after the release. In January 2011, the company launched a new website - Znanija.com– the first international project dedicated to the Russian speakers.^[5] It is now the biggest platform in the group. Later on, the brand created several other versions, including language versions for the following markets: Turkey (eodev.com), Latin America and Spain (misdeberes.es) and Brazil (brainly.com.br). The next important step took place in December 2013, when a number of new language versions of Brainly were launched. The project resulted in the official launch of 7 new versions – English (brainly.com), Indonesian (brainly.id), India (brainly.in), Philippine (brainly.ph), Thai (brainly-thailand.com)^[6] Romanian (brainly.ro) and Italian (brainly.it). At the moment, the company employs about 50 people. Initially, Brainly was financed by the co-founders and in 2012 the group raised funds from Point Nine Capital^[7] and Business Angels.^[8][9] In October 2014, the company announced that it has raised another round of funding from General Catalyst Partners, Runa Capital and other venture capitals. The total amount of the investment was $9 million and allowed further product development, as well as opening of a new, US-based headquarters in New York City, NY.^[10]

Website

General overview

Brainly is a Q&A platform for students, looking for help with their homework-related tasks. They can post questions to the community which then offers help. Every question and answer can be commented. The users can freely collaborate on given tasks.^[11] All of the questions are categorized by school subjects taught in the particular country and the school level.

Gamification

Every user is given a fixed amount points upon registration, which they can spend to ask questions.^[12] Points are mainly earned from answering, but there are some particular activities on the website, which can earn a user an additional amount of points. Every answer is awarded a half of the points used by the inquirer. 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. The website also features rankings (daily, weekly, monthly and general) of users with the highest number of points gained from answering questions (Brainliest Users).

Community interactions

Social interactions between users are concentrated around a few of the functions of the platform – the chat/private message^[4] system, comments sections in user profiles and comments in the question threads. Whereas the first is used for private conversations between the users, the latter two are utilized for collaboration on tasks and social interactions within the community. Each user can create their own network of connections by befriending other users.

References