Yahoo! Answers

Back in the day, there was Google Answers. The theory behind Google Answers was that users could pose questions that would go to a “group of experts” who would then provide the answer. While this was a nice idea, it was hardly used (at least in my observance it wasn’t). I’d guess that this was because there was a service charge to do so. Realistically, people were more likely to go Googling for themselves.

Today, Yahoo! announced Yahoo! Answers which, on its face, seems to be the identical service to Google Answers. Users pose questions and get answers. The difference, however, between Yahoo and Google in this case is that 1) the service is free and 2) the experts are us, other net users.

In a test run of the service, I found that, not uncommonly, the service is tied to a Yahoo ID. When posing the question, the user can drop it into a category and subcategory. Yahoo calls this tagging. I call it categorizing. Semantics really. The UI, in this case, reminded me on an antiquity from the stone age of the information age – 1998. In my opinion, AJAXifying the interface would add a lot more appeal to the everyday user.

Upon posing the question, “What is the airspeed velocity of a coconut laden swallow”, and submitting it to the Science/Math->Zoology category, my question was added to the top of the stack where other users have the opportunity to respond.

You might see abuse of this (trolling, bad advice, etc) coming into play here. Yahoo did incorporate a reputation system into the system. Users should take caution when accepting advice from lower repped users.

All in all, Yahoo wins this battle… at least for the time being.