The Flickrization of Yahoo continues… Yahoo Answers has updated with a new sharing system which lets Yahoo Answers users share Questions & Answers they feel are interesting via “Stars.”
Adding a bit more social networking into the mix, the new Yahoo Answers Stars sharing system is a bit reminiscent of StumbleUpon, deli.icio.us or Digg, in the realm of thinking that once a Q&A is marked interesting, you can also see the other Yahoo members who have also done so.
A new way to meet people with your same interests? Perhaps. But even more powerful may be the Digg-like component where questions which have enough ‘votes’ make it to the Yahoo Answers homepage.
From the Yahoo Answers team:
Starring questions lets the Answers community surface the best questions on the site. When a question is starred, it is automatically nominated to appear in the new “Popular” list on the front page of Answers (check it out!).
Answers’ Popular list is similar to Flickr’s “Interestingness” and the del.icio.us “Hotlist.” Sharing popular content has made these community experiences much better, and we believe our community will benefit from sharing interests with each other.
It also seems that enhanced social networking is in the works with Yahoo Answers, which is very exciting after Yahoo’s acquisition of MyBlogLog.
The Yahoo Answers team says that they will be enhancing the ability for Yahoo ‘Answerers’ to be able to connect with one another; “We will be adding additional functionality to make it easier for you to learn about and connect with other Answers community members in coming months.”
Very exciting news from Yahoo, especially since their social networking arm has been more or less in limbo since they launched Yahoo 360.
I find it interesting that they are using the Yahoo Answers system as a foundation for such networking, but you know what?
Yahoo Answers is THE pinnacle social media success launched by Yahoo and virtually all other search companies (MSN Spaces is probably a close second) and building upon such success to slowly build the Yahoo 360 Borg is logical.
Perhaps Yahoo is on the right track. Of course, I still believe Yahoo 360 should be morphed into MyYahoo, as too many people have too many start pages on the Internet and with a 360/MyYahoo start page Yahoo would probably see much more active social networking and social media users.
