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?).
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.
This is a unique forum for the people of Seattle and the candidates because, as The Stranger put it: “It’s an opportunity for the community to ask questions directly of the candidates without those pesky reporters getting in the middle”. You ask, they answer.
The questions are closed for now and the candidates are doing the answering. You can still comment on the answers and be your own truth meter. Also if you missed asking questions for this one, there are 7 more on the way over the next few weeks, including the Mayors. Go ahead ask them what you really want answered.
We’ll continue to refine the experience for everyone, so if you found anything confusing or ways it might be better just let us know at talk2us@yousaidit.com, or on our Q&A page.
Mark Briggs (@markbriggs) sent me a post from PaidContent today about Yahoo Answers rolling out “Neighborhoods” – basically their Q&A service broken into neighborhoods. Yahoo Answers is a phenomenally successful site from a traffic standpoint being one of the most popular on the web.
But as I’ve said before, national Q&A is of limited value since people want local answers from local people – and I assume the” neighborhood” makes advertising opportunities all the better. After all people are in a neighborhoods asking questions – what better audience could you have?
I still think Yahoo is falling short of the mark because they are not representing actual communities. Communities convene around existing websites where they get their local news or shop or follow their hobbies or do their work. The Q&A should be based around that community. It’s not just locale that matters, it’s common interests and common values.
They also fall short because they continue to try and take people away from their local sites. They are essentially building a Walmart in your neighborhood. It made sense with something like Craigslist or Job Listings because fragmentation of this information was detrimental. You want to know all the jobs in your areas, not just those at a given site. But when it comes to Q&A the closer you get to the people in your community the better the answers. Consolidating them just adds noise. It’s not just WHAT someone says, it’s WHO is saying it.
Q&A should be on local shops. They are the local grocery store and hobby shop where you meet people and ask them what they think. They are the hobby conventions and the work groups you see at conferences.
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.
Mark Briggs (@markbriggs) sent me a post from 
