We might like to post on Facebook or Twitter about how much we loathe Comcast and love Game of Thrones, but marketers love when we express our opinions online even more. For them, our sentiments and preferences translate into advertising gold.

But to get our data, marketers run up against two problems. First, opinions disappear from Twitter and Facebook feeds. Second, even with sophisticated algorithms, it's not always easy to tell whether we like something or not. Anda Gansca and Stephanie Volftsun think they can solve both problems with their new app, Knotch, which launched Thursday.

Knotch is an iOS app that catalogs opinions � your own, your friends' and random internet strangers' � on movies, politics, restaurants, TV shows, businesses, the weather, and any other topic you can imagine. Like Twitter, there are trending topics, and you can also add your own topic, brand, or business. You can also follow other people's opinions (friends and strangers) to see how they feel about anything and everything.

A Knotch profile

But what makes Knotch arguably unique in the crowded world of opinion-funneling apps � as if there's a shortage of places to express your opinions on the internet! � are the subtle shades of feeling you can express. Instead of using a "like" button or a five-star scale, you express your opinion using one of 10 colors, ranging from red to dark blue. Red (hot) means you love something, while blue (cold) is reserved for what you hate.

"We wanted to create an international scale that people can understand no matter their language or culture," says Gansca. "Hot and cold are culturally universal." You can also add a comment that expands upon your feelings, though that's not required. Others can comment on your activity and "like" your opinions.

"Few people think in a binary, where everything is hated or loved," says Knotch beta tester Mercy Bell, who gave a recent Ashton Kutcher rom-com a "blue," though not a "dark blue." "With Knotch there's a variety."

As users feed more data into the app, trends could begin to pop up for topics and brands. Those trends are more meaningful for marketers, says Gansca, because the colors create data points that translate into useful sentiment analysis without needing to rely on an algorithm that might struggle to understand, for example, whether the words you write in a tweet or Facebook status update are sarcastic or not. Gansca also argues that Knotch's 10-color scale offers marketers more meaningful insight than simple up-or-down votes.

Next year, the angel-backed company plans to open up its data to brands that want to hear what the world thinks of them and are willing to pay for the privilege. Knotch hopes to make money both by charging companies to access its data and to promote topics on the service much like Twitter does now.

And it won't just be marketers who benefit from your opinions, says Gansca. She's cooking up ways to reward users for adding their "knotches," with either gift cards, discounts, or free products.

For now, Gansca and Volftsun are focused on getting users to add their opinions to the app in hopes of reaching that critical mass where Knotch becomes a forum not just for expressing your opinions influencing the decisions and feelings of others. In their opinion (red hot), "knotching" should be right up there with "tweeting" � the next big verb in social media.