Yahoo Answers Launches : User Powered Social Media
Jeremy Zawodny has announced a new Yahoo Search service on the YSearchBlog, Yahoo Answers. Yahoo Answers at first glance seems to be a Yahoo user community where one can ask questions and have them answered by other Yahoo’ers or Yahoo staff. On Yahoo Answers users can ask a question on any topic and real people will post an answer to that question. The service is a good fit for Yahoo, which prides itself on its registered member base and user generated content (like Yahoo User Reviews).
Yahoo Answers also has all of the buzzes and whistles of a Yahoo Social Media product, with add to My Yahoo buttons, RSS, Yahoo Member Photos and Avatars, and Q&A categories. There seems to not be any tie ins to Yahoo Local, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Messenger or Yahoo 360 as of yet, but don’t be surprised if Jeremy & the Yahoo 2.0 crew figure out some way to tie all of these Social Media offerings together (think Yelp).
Yes, unlike some search engines, Yahoo does have a master plan for its Social Media & Search offerings (Yahoo Search Pyramid). It should also be noted that Google Answers, also offering user powered question answering, has been available for quite some time.
Jeremy posts on YSearchBlog : 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…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..
That’s what Yahoo! Answers was designed for. We want to give anyone a place to tap the collective wisdom of the Internet for advice, recommendations, theories, jokes, … whatever. Anyone can answer. It’s free. And once your question is answered, you get to pick the best answer and the whole thread is archived and searchable. So in addition to getting answers, you’re helping to add to the “the Internet’s” collective knowledge.
Of course, it has categories for the questions, per category RSS feeds, notifications, and other goodies too…
