For an overview of how to use CrowdBurst, visit How It Works.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Is my advice anonymous?
    Yes. There's no way for someone you send advice to to see where it came from. If you're not a CrowdBurst member, we don't know your name, email address, or anything else about you (and we don't store your IP address). If you're signed in to your account, then we'll remember advice you've sent, so you can see it in your Sent folder — but we'll never show that information to the recipient of the advice. Of course, you can always put your name in the message itself if you want the recipient to know who you are.
  • If someone asks me for my advice, will my answer be anonymous?
    That depends on how many people the requester sent the invitation to. If the requester asked only you for advice, then obviously it won't be anonymous. If the invitation was sent out to 3 or more people, we'll try our best to anonymize the responses by 1) waiting until at least TBD advisors have responsed before delivering the advice, and 2) scrambling the order of the answers to survey questions (if there's a survey involved) to make it harder to tell who said what. When you get an invitation, you'll see how many other people it was sent to (though not who they are), so you can always decide not to respond if you're not comfortable.
  • What's a survey, exactly?
    Surveys are prepackaged sets of questions that you may find useful when sending or receiving advice. For instance, if you want to send someone feedback about a speech they just gave, you can look for a survey about public speaking, fill it out, and send it to them. The survey might have questions you wouldn't have thought of if you were to just send your own advice. Likewise, if you're looking for advice about how to improve your leadership skills, there's no reason to reinvent the wheel by desigining your own set of questions; you can just pick an existing survey that gets at the information you want. (If you can't find one, please create one for us!)
  • Why do I need to create an account to ask for advice?
    You can send advice anonymously as a visitor, without signing up for the site, because we don't need to know anything about you. However, if you want to ask for advice, we need to know how to find you again so we can give you the answers! That's why we ask you to create an account with an email address. (Of course, creating an account also gives you access to lots of cool features like creating, listing, and favoriting surveys.)
  • Won't my enemies take advantage of CrowdBurst to send me rude or inappropriate advice?
    Yes, that's always possible. But it's not likely. We believe that most people are inherently disposed to want to help other people, not to hurt them. All they need is an opportunity and a prompt to send constructive criticism and they're happy to help you improve. However, if you've received inappropriate advice, please report it using the Flag light button located at the bottom of the offending message. (You can also let us know here).
  • Forget anonymity — I want the person I give advice to to know who I am.
    OK by us — we won't stop you from signing your advice with your name or email. CrowdBurst may still be useful to you without the anonymity part since you can send targeted advice via a survey.
  • I don't want to get any messages from CrowdBurst. How did you guys get my email anyway?
    We don't have your email! Unless you've signed up for the website and have a public profile with us, only someone who already knows your email address can send you feedback through CrowdBurst. We'll never send you spam — any advice you get is from a real person who knows you. We're very sorry to hear you're not happy with our service; we're working on a blacklist feature where you'll be able to block people from sending you advice. For now, just get in touch with us.
  • I'm being harassed — can I block advice from this jerk?
    We're very sorry to hear you've had a bad experience with us. We're working on a blacklist feature now, but it's not quite ready yet. For now, please contact us and tell us what's going on. And you can always set up a filter to send our emails to your spam box :(
  • What does it mean for a survey to be public?
    A public survey is one that can be used by other people on CrowdBurst to request their own feedback. They'll be able to see that you are the author of the survey. If you create a public survey, that does not imply that anyone will be able to view your feedback — it just means other people can use your survey to send or ask for their own advice.
  • What are Listed Surveys?
    Listed Surveys are surveys that you'd like other people to fill out and send to you on a regular basis. For instance, you might want to get regular feedback about how well your clients or leadership skills are improving, or you might want to invite criticism about your fashion sense. Listed surveys appear on your profile page so that other people can quickly find them and fill them out for you. Visit a survey and click on the Not listed button to add it to your Listed Surveys.
  • What are Favorite Surveys?
    Favoriting a survey is just a way to find it again quickly. If you find yourself frequently sending the same survey over and over again, click the Not favorite button on a survey to add it to your Favorite Surveys.
  • How much does it cost?
    Zilch. CrowdBurst is absolutely free. (One day soon we'll bring you additional premium personal coaching services that will be available for a fee, but they won't impact our existing services.)
  • Why do I need to sign in to fill out a posted survey?
    So you can't vote twice :) We want our survey answers to be as realistic as possible, so we can't afford to let them be skewed by one or two over-enthusastic individuals.
  • Why do I need to sign in to see the results of a posted survey?
    Seeing the results of the survey will inevitably skew your own opinions a little bit — you can't help it. We want you to fill out the survey first, before you see the results.
  • Wait, why is this better than just emailing the guy, again?
    It's not, necessarily. But at times, telling someone about their flaws can be a bit...awkward. CrowdBurst helps you sidestep that. More importantly, our large selection of user-created surveys allows you to tailor your advice to your audience and give them exactly the information they need to improve.
Couldn't find it in the FAQ? Contact us.