I have a hunch destination sites are not ideal for Q&A

As much as I am a fan of teams that are innovating around Q&A – we are one of those teams so of course I am bias – the thing I don’t get is the focus on destination sites. I mean, here I am  browsing a site on the web and checking out their products, and suddenly I have a question: “will those solar panels fit my roof”‘, “will those shoes be comfortable for long walks?”…

What’s the idea? Am I meant to stop what I’m doing and go to Yahoo Answers or Hunch or Aardvark and ask someone THAT question? How will they know what I’m talking about? Wouldn’t it make more sense just to ask someone who is an employee/customer/visitor to the site? Someone already there, in context, who knows what I’m talking about?

The different forms of Q&A

Two companies have recently launched Q&A related products: Hunch and Aardvark. I have to say, I love both of their names. Both are open for invites.

Hunch appears to be taking the approach of the crowd-sourced decision-tree. You ask it a question and it in turn asks you questions and then provides an answer and tells you its degree of certainty. It asks you questions so it can get to know you better and give you better answers. Clever idea. It’s early days and early reviews and users seem mixed.

Aardvark is getting far more positive reviews and is self-described “social search”. The idea is that you ask a question and Aardvark forwards it through your social network based on their expertise as expressed on their profiles.

There is a lot of work being done around Q&A, some of it really innovative because one of the main things people do online is ask questions.

We love KUOW

KUOW is the public radio station in Seattle. We’re their biggest fans and really flattered to be on their front page at KUOW.ORG.

Major Product Updates & New Web Site

Alot has happened in the last 30 days. The Q&A product has gone through many refinements in usability. We have completely overhauled the web site to do a better job of communicating what we do. And we have finished support for integrated sign-in.

Integrated sign-in is huge since it means that partners can add Q&A to their site and their visitors will only need to sign in to their site in order to be automatically signed into the Q&A with the same credentials.

We are one of the few sites you will see out there – especially at our early stage – that has both Facebook connect and Integrated sign-in. We expect it will make a huge difference to the ease of adoption.

I’ll provide details in upcoming posts. Meanwhile, go check out the web site at YouSaidIt.