Brainly is the world's largest peer-to-peer learning community for students, parents and teachers. At Brainly, students connect to both receive and offer help with homework problems and questions. The unique opportunity for students to freely ask questions and gain the confidence that comes from helping others and inspires students to learn in a collaborative community that receives more than 200 million users each month. Based in Kraków, Poland, with its US headquarters in New York City, Brainly is currently available in 35 countries. The network has elements of gamification in the form of motivational points and ranks, and encourages users to engage in the online community by asking questions and answering those of other students.
History
Initially called Zadane.pl, the company was founded in 2009 in Poland by Michał Borkowski, Tomasz Kraus and Łukasz Haluch. The first million unique users monthly was achieved within 6 months after the release. In January 2011, the company founded Znanija.com, the first international project dedicated to Russian language speakers. Several other versions in multiple languages for the following markets included Turkey, Latin America and Spain and Brazil. In December 2013, seven new language versions of Brainly were released, including English, Indonesian, Indian, Filipino, Romanian and Italian sites. Brainly was initially funded by the co-founders, but then raised funds from Point Nine Capital. 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. 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. In May 2016, another funding round of $18 million of combined debt and equity was disclosed. In June 2016, Brainly acquired the US-based OpenStudy. In March or April 2017, Zadane.pl changed to Brainly. In October 2017, Brainly raised $14 million in the funding round led by Kulczyk Investments. In January 2018, Brainly announced it had acquired the video education start-up, Bask, to bring video technology to the Brainly platform. In July 2019, Brainly raised $30 million in a Series C funding round led by Naspers, with participation from Runa Capital and Manta Ray. The total funds raised by the company since its establishment is reported to be $68.5 million.
Website
General overview
Brainly provides questions and answers for students and parents looking for help with homework-related tasks. Students use Brainly to strengthen their skills across many subjects such as math, history, science, and social science. The platform allows them to connect with their peers, subject matter experts, and professional educators to discuss their subjects and seek answers to their questions. Users may post comments to every question and answer and can freely collaborate on problems. All questions are categorized by subject, respective of country and school level.
Gamification
Each user is given a fixed amount points upon registration, which are used to ask questions. Subsequently, one can answer questions to gain additional points.
Ranks and Ranking
Initially, Brainly automatically gives you ranks depending upon number of points you have earned and number of Brainliest answers you have. For example, Genius rank is given to the user who has earned 15000 points and 50 Brainliest answers by answering questions. If someone is interested in specific subject and answers a lot questions in that subject, some geographical domains of Brainly provide that user a Subject or Wizard rank. For example, if a user has answered 500 questions in Mathematics with 50 or more Brainliest answers, then the user may apply for the rank "Maths Aryabhatt". Brainly users who have helped a lot of other users are provided with some special ranks. The criteria for this ranks is dependent upon the number of questions that user has answered, number of points user has, number of thanks and/or other criterion. Besides this, Brainly provides teacher ranks to professional teachers. Brainly also has a leaderboard system or ranking system. This system has four time intervals: Daily, Weekly, Monthly, and Quarterly. The Brainly system considers the data of all users and checks for users who have answered the most questions and have earned the most points in a particular time interval. According to this, the top users are sorted into the Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Quarterly leaderboards.
Content Moderation
Brainly, a site with 250 million users, includes different students, teachers and parents. As like any website, Brainly also has some users who violate the site rules, including copy-pasting answers from other sources, spamming irrelevant comments, posting assessment questions, and many others. To handle these users and to keep Brainly for educational purposes, Brainly gives the opportunity to its users to become a moderator. The process of becoming a moderator varies slightly between each geographical domain. In general, the first step is to positively contribute to the site by providing quality answers to many questions. Then, one may apply and potentially be accepted into an entry-level team, which may be referred to as a Stars team, a Trusted Helpers team, or another name, depending on the geographical domain. When one receives sufficient training and is deemed competent by a team leader or leaders, one may be selected as Moderator. Depending on a moderator's experience and execution of their duties, they can receive a promotion to the next rank. In this way, Brainly provides opportunity for students and other users to gain online volunteer experience with a well-established company while facilitating good leadership, teamwork and communication skills.
