You never know who you’ll meet on the internet. Maybe it’s the Craigslist killer, or maybe it’s the author of a book you need to read for your summer school assignment. For Yahoo! user ♥ Idiot America ~ ϟƘƦІןן∑x ♥, the latter held true. He (lazily) took to Yahoo! Answers to have someone else review his summer reading book for him, The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep And Never Had To by DC… → Read More
There are some 3.7 billion web searches every month for education-related topics. However, ask a student how easy it is to find answers to their burning academic questions, and they’ll probably just roll their eyes. Sure, there’s Wikipedia, Google (and Google Scholar), Khan Academy and there are even Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers or Answers.com. While Khan is great for videos, it doesn’t… → Read More
Let me start with a disclaimer: I am not writing this in my capacity as a university professor or researcher; I don’t claim to be an expert on social networking; and I will be happy to be proven wrong—I have no vested interest in the success or failure of Quora. And given the fire I’ve already taken for tweeting an opinion that defies the Valley’s infinite wisdom, I know that this post… → Read More
As we’re all well aware by now, the Q&A service Quora is exploding with growth. And while that may seem like a good thing, there are two distinct downsides. First, Quora is a pretty complex site and so scaling to accomodate huge user growth is difficult. And second, there has been a belief since the site launched to the public that as it grew more popular, the less useful it would become. Put… → Read More
About a week ago, word started getting out that Facebook is beta testing a new “killer app” called Facebook Questions. For beta testers, the Questions feature appears in the left-hand column just below Events and Photos. It lets you ask and answer questions to and from your extended circle of friends.
A few days ago, Facebook opened up the private beta further and is now taking applications for… → Read More
Back in October, Yahoo revealed that Yahoo Answers sees 30 million questions and answers per month, with users contributing 2.4 questions and answers per second. Although Yahoo Answers sees a significant amount of traffic, its design and layout has been outdated. Now Yahoo is rolling out a much-need upgrade and redesign to Answers, which will be implemented over the next few days.
Navigation: The… → Read More
Here’s a question for you. How many Q&A sites does the Web really need? Already, there is Yahoo Answers, WikiAnswers, Mahalo Answers, Linkedin Answers, ChaCha and dozens beyond. But Wikia (and Wikipedia) co-founder Jimmy Wales thinks there is room for one more.
We learned from a tip that he has quietly launched Wikianswers, a Question & Answer site that attempts to create one true… → Read More
Yahoo Answers is three years old this week, and it is the fifth most popular property within Yahoo after the homepage, search, Yahoo Mail, and Yahoo Shopping. (See the table below). According to Quantcast, it attracts 24 million monthly unique visitors in the U.S. ComScore puts the number a bit higher at 33 million monthly U.S. visitors, and 154 million worldwide. It’s a pageview machine, with… → Read More
Part of Yahoo’s survival strategy beyond merging with AOL may be to sell of what they consider to be non-core assets for cash. We heard from a source that Yahoo may be quietly reaching out to a couple of potential buyers to see if they’d be interested in their Yahoo Answers property. We filed the rumor away under “ridiculous” until today, when we confirmed with a different source at a major… → Read More
Yahoo Answers turns one today. The company will hold a celebration at its campus in Sunnyvale to celebrate how far they’ve come. In one year, Yahoo Answers has had 60 million users and 160 million answers. Along with the party, Yahoo is publishing data from a Harris Interactive survey, showing how people are using online Q&A sites like Answers. The survey shows that one in three online… → Read More
A company called BitWine launched an interactive search site about three weeks ago. It is much like Ether in that it is a call-an-expert service, except BitWine is integrated with Skype. In fact BitWine will be a Skype plugin when Skype 3.0 launches, which will likely be in early 2007. With BitWine, users deem themselves experts in specific categories and establish their per-minute consulting fee. → Read More
The wildly successful Yahoo! Answers is moving to take its global community of user shared knowledge to the next level with today’s release of an API for outside developers interested in accessing the huge Yahoo! Answers site. The company says there are now 30 million plus answers in the system, from amusing ones to useful ones. Answers has also got an intensely loyal userbase. Developers… → Read More
Yahoo! Answers unveiled a new promotion today called “Ask the Planet,” where celebrities, notables and allegedly interesting people will pose questions that users will answer for a chance to win prizes. The celebrity line up is high-profile and should garner a lot of attention. Questions will be posed to users by the following: Marilyn vos Savant, the holder of world’s highest… → Read More
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