ReadWriteWeb posted about the success of Answers.com today. They are growing rapidly and profitable which is great, but where is it all coming from? WikiAnswers is the answer.
On a separate note PaidContent posted about Sharecare, a health Q&A launching with some great expert content from Dr. Oz and a team he is assembling.
Q&A is big business. But RWW raises an important issue: How good is the content? At these mega sites it may be questionable (pun intended). We think that the content will be better when Q&A is integrated into site content and their communities.
UGC is gradually moving in the direction of Social Content which is far more relevant and valuable. That’s why we provide Social Q&A for communities with expert content.
The latest city to join Questionland is Boise. The Boise Weekly, some of the nicest and coolest people have launched: You Ask. Boise Answers. So go ahead and ask.
You can also ask questions in Seattle at The Stranger and Portland at The Portland Mercury. We’ll be announcing new cities as they join… and remember there can be only ONE (Questionland is limited to 1 per city and um… you won’t get that reference unless you know the film. Do you?).
Moderation Threshhold: Now moderators can set a threshhold for reported posts and will be emailed when a post is reported over the threshhold (default is 3 times). You can also set “Auto-Reject” to have posts automatically rejected and removed from the site when they’re reported over the threshhold.
Improved Reported Posts List: Way better display of posts that have been reported. Rejected posts can be filtered out and posts are only displayed once with info on each time they were reported (date and by whom).
OTHER
Added # of Answers to Questions RSS feed (c/o Marc Briggs at Serra Media)
New OAuth API Functions:
User ID: Retrieve the YouSaidIt User ID with:
http://yourdomain.yousaidit.com/oauth/user.json?id=YOURID
http://yourdomain.yousaidit.com/oauth/user.xml?id=YOURID
Logout: Clear a YouSaidIt session with:
http://yourdomain.yousaidit.com/oauth/logout?return_url=http://yourdomain.com/your/usual/logout/url
McGinn was having a great time answering questions at The Stranger. The campaign staff tweeted a picture of him at the time saying he was having fun. Both he and Mallahan spent an hour answering questions directly posed by and ranked by The Stranger community.
This is an important vote, so get involved and know who you want to get elected and why. If you’re mot aware of the issues – I wasn’t – just go read some of the questions.
Dominic Holden wrote a great decription of Electionland at The Stranger. They are covering 9 races/initiatives and have virtually all the candidates participating. You ask the questions, they answer them. No media in the middle. So it’s not just watching, you can participate in a Town Hall while drinking a beer. I personally had a great time at the last one – The Housing Levy. I knew little about it at the start and had some pretty simple questions about raising property taxes. By the end I had a real sense of what the pros and cons are and what the impact will be. Very cool.
This is a fun one and all too true. Sorry if you’ve seen it before. (Thanks to Josh Dirks for pointing it out – follow him, read his blog, and get ready for his new venture).
Excerpts from a presentation for an upcoming social media event:
Itsy Bitsy Spiders: Everything I need to know about social media I learned in Kindergarten. A simple but powerful perspective on social media which shows how it is different from other online tasks like SEO or website design and content. It is NOT about the BIG spider (Google) but all the itsy bitsy spiders that weave their own small webs and catch only the tastiest stuff. What makes social media interesting is not real-time search, but selective, passive content delivery. All we have to do is remember show-and-tell from kindergarten. Find the good stuff, tell your class about it.
If you’d like to vote for this presentation you can do so at this Facebook Poll. Voting is only open until Monday, and since it’s a Facebook app that problem means you should start now. Thanks for your help.
ReadWriteWeb posted about the success of Answers.com today. They are growing rapidly and profitable which is great, but where is it all coming from? WikiAnswers is the answer.
