The Q and A Web Space Part 2

You will probably think, if Yahoo has Q and A service, then probably Google and Microsoft has. In fact,  both used to have but not anymore.

Microsoft service was called: MSN QandA (actually it started as Live Search QandA then Windows Live QandA).  Another example showing how much Microsoft is confused about naming and packaging its products families…

MSN QandA was bit similar to Yahoo Answers. Users could ask questions, tag them according to topic, and gain points and reputation for answering other users’ questions.

The first of the three was Google Answers,  it was different as it used to  involve fees for asking questions. When a question is asked a price is offered, and any researcher who is interested in answering the question will lock the question and answer it.  Researchers were not Google employees, but contractors that were required to complete an application process to be approved to answer for the site. The website was closed in December 2006.

More about other today’s major players in online Q and A in the next post.

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.