Decisions, Decisions: Do You Really Need a Private Social Network?

There are likely moments in your personal and professional life when you need the guidance of others as you make a big decision. Collaborating on public social networks or through group texts and emails can be cumbersome (and potentially embarrassing) however, but private social network gDecide hopes to change that with its new application, launched just this week.

The website enables users to privately collaborate on decisions (whether personal, social, or business) with their friends, families, colleagues, and others. The platform combines social technologies, gamification, and cognitive science in the hopes that it will improve decision making and lead to substantially better outcomes for users of the product.

It could be an ideal solution for those that want feedback before making a critical-life decision or a way to measure the sentiment of a change in business strategy.

gDecide users create a question, share it, discuss it privately, get feedback, tally the votes, and review the feedback. The users can then take action and share the results of their decision with their network if they want (or keep it private).

"Today, when people have a private question, they email or text everyone, start a group chat, conduct an online poll on Facebook or other social networking sites, or communicate with their confidants using disjointed tools and separated conversation threads," says gDecide CEO and founder Rudolf Melik. "With gDecide users privately discuss their questions with their chosen participants. Individuals can control who sees what, the choices offered, when to close the discussion, when to vote and what actions to take. They can also publicly share the results and outcome of some of their decisions on gDecide or Facebook."