The Q and A Webspace Part 4

Back to my post “The Q and A Webspace Part 2″, talking about Google Answers. The researchers who were making a living from answering questions, decided to create a similar website after the shutdown of Google Answers. So Uclue started in 2007, and was very similar to Google Answers as a fee based Q and A service. Currently, only former Google Answers Researchers may apply to become Uclue Researchers. It is the place for you if you need to ask complicated questions that demand research and expertise. For example a question like this one:

What are the effects of Social Networking on Real Estate Regulation?

Do you expect to get a satisfactory answer on a free Q&A website? Most probably not, but you will probably get an answer with lots of details and information if not a full essay if you ask it on Uclue with a good offer.

No much work is done on Uclue feautres and design. So it still feels like a website from the late nineties.

Another good Q and A website is BlurtIt, it has a good simple interface, has less categories to keep it simple, users can even ask and answer as guests without creating an account. Like AnswerBag  it is available as a facebook application, and also available as a service on Twitter.

End of last year Mahalo.com started a QandA free service still in its beta. It is unsurprisingly called Mahalo Answers, similar to Yahoo Answers, but it allows tipping of answerer, which will definitely encourage more members, and encourage more participation, but still has way smaller user base than answers.yahoo.com

From all the mentioned QandA services, I have used Yahoo Answers the most, if you have a Yahoo acount and you need a service that integrates with other Yahoo services, and you need answers within minutes of your question then Yahoo Answers is for you. If you are a facebook user and you like to use facebook applications then go for Answerbag. If you like the Wiki concept and you want to contribute a better quality answer question database then Wiki Answers is the one for you. If you need to ask questions that need extra work and research to answer and you are ready to pay a small sum of money then Uclue is there for you.

PS: Sorry no comparison table of features and traffic..etc.

The Q and A Web Space Part 1

About 10 years ago, I remembered looking for a website where I can ask questions and receive answers. A friend referred me to a website called www.allexperts.com, it was the first questions and answers service on the web. The site had volunteers in different categories, and every volunteer had a profile where he used to tell about his experience and knowledge areas. The website is still active and  belongs  to about.com. , but I doubt it has good traffic, because today much more modern and more (web2.0) collaborative type  QandA wesbites have been created.

Yahoo! Answers is today’s  most popular one with 179 millions users and over 1 billions questions and answers! While Yahoo is losing popularity as a search engine to its counterpart Google. This was definitely its best product. When searching Google, for questions,  pages results from Yahoo Answers often takes highest ranks.

For example: Google for “What’s the best book to read about the 2012 conspiracy?” And here you are, it is an already asked question on Yahoo Answers and it is the first result of Google search. It is not that easy to come up with a question that is not already asked on Yahoo Answers! Actually when you ask a question on Yahoo Answers, it will automatically shows you on the side bar (while writing your question) similar already asked questions. And you are most probably likely to find your question already asked by another user.

In the next post I will talk about other QandA websites.