Seeking Answers

Google Answers has been closed while Yahoo! Answers goes from strength to strength. The key dif­fer­ence between the two is that Google’s service paid vetted ‘experts’ to produce results, while Yahoo allows anyone to pitch in. The whole thing leaves a lot of questions.

I’m not sure whether the stats prove an uncom­plic­ated victory for social search and crowd­sourced problem-​​solving, for a start. I’ve really no idea which service produces better answers, being one issue. It probably depends on the question. ‘What’s a good Italian res­taurant in Cardiff?’ will work well with the Yahoo! model because it has a wider reach. On the other hand, you might not want to trust folk wisdom for a solution to matters that require a spe­cial­ised knowledge.

It does show that a free-​​for-​​all, give-​​and-​​take know­ledge source is very addictive and, pre­sum­ably, helpful enough. Involving people like Stephen Hawking and Oprah Winfrey bought Yahoo! a vital share of atten­tion Google never bothered with. Also, as Brady Forrest points out, Yahoo!‘s model could scale organ­ic­ally, while Google’s required the recruit­ment and vetting of answerers, a time-​​consuming and dis­tracting business.

Is this victory analagous to what will happen in the battle between the Wikipedia and the Britannica? It seems very similar on face value. Not entirely, though, since their business models are dif­ferent: Wikipedia survives on char­it­able dona­tions and drubbing the oppos­i­tion when it comes to traffic is not nearly as helpful as it has been to Yahoo!

[I inter­viewed Steven Taylor, RVP of Yahoo! UK here, back in August and he talked a little about the Answers service]

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