ASK AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE
With the announcement today of Yahoo! Answers, the company seems to be evolving from it's decade-old, original acronym "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle" to the source for "Yet Additional Hordes of Opinionated Oracles".
From being THE source for Answers to also being THE PATH to Answers from the masses.
With Yahoo! Answers, the company evolves from it's roots in Directories and Search and tries to add the "wisdom of the masses". As the company notes on it's blog:
"The popularity of web search has changed the way we think about the Internet in some pretty odd ways. I've heard more than a few people struggling to answer a question who turn to their keyboard and proclaim, "I'll just ask the Internet…" while typing something into a search box.
Amazingly, that works in a lot of cases. When it comes to locating facts, such as the capital of India, web search rocks. But there are many times that keywords just don't cut it—times when you need to ask a question to a group of humans. You know, real people."
Gary Price of Search Engine Watch has an excellent two part series explaining the ins and outs of Yahoo! Answers and how it's different from other seemingly similar services like Google Answers.
The answer is that Yahoo! Answers is VERY different from Google Answers and other services out there to date. Although today's version is but an early beta, with a lot of changes to come, the service already feels to me to be the MOST CASUAL of all the alternatives. By that I mean, it feels less intimidating and more user-friendly than the alternatives right out of the gate.
Google Answers is a strict "pay for your answers" kind of service, where someone agrees to research your question and come back with an answer for an agreed upon fee.
Yahoo!'s service on the other hand comes across as just an extension of other friendly, Yahoo! services, a place where you can just ask a question of other Yahoo! users, and get the answer emailed (or RSS-fed) to you when available, for no money.
The good Samaritan who answers gets a bump in their reputation and authority. No muss, no fuss...very casual. See the tour here to get a feel for it.
At the risk of evoking more Web 2.0 jargon, it's CASUAL MICROCHUNKING of questions randomly answered in a microchunked fashion by any one out there on the edges with the inclination and hopefully, some expertise in the subject at hand.
It's been a busy week for services that offer answers on the web.
As Fred Wilson notes in two posts, this week also saw the launch of Seth Godin's new startup Squidoo, which offers yet another twist to the "answers from authorities" opportunity.
Squidoo takes the whole answering business to another level, whereby anyone with expertise on anything can build a lens (a web page with links) that provides as deep or shallow series of answers on a subject as they'd like. There are mechanisms for earning reputation AND money into the system.
Squidoo's approach allows for a more FORMAL build-up of the SUPPLY of Answers, while also giving the DEMAND side for Answers an easy way to search and find "lenses" that may be helpful to users in their quest.
It's an exciting time for this nascent opportunity in an area that has seen several other start-ups with different variants of the basic model. It's an evolution of the old bulletin boards and lists of "Frequently Asked Questions" that have been a staple for answers for online services since the 1970s. And they all share a common potential problem.
As Gary Price explains it in the context of Yahoo! Answers:
"Yahoo also needs to be very vigilant to monitor:
+ Spam
+ Scams
+ Uses as a marketing tool (working in plugs for various products into answers). Infomercials of a different sort.
+ Members who consistently cause problemsIn other words, can the Yahoo Answers community of users police themselves or will Yahoo have to step in and be aggressive in their policing? Will Yahoo Answers simply be the next generation of an online bulletin board and online groups like Yahoo Groups which, unfortunately, deliver plenty of spam."
This will be an ever-present issue for all these services to address and keep in control. But it's an exciting opportunity.
To paraphrase the eternal hope of all seekers of knowledge through the ages, "The Answers are out there", now more than ever.
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