Against what could be considered great odds, Yahoo Answers has reached a pretty stunning milestone: 300 million questions have been asked since the service launched in 2005. But despite that figure, activity on Yahoo Answers is on the decline. The company's announcement today includes these additional statistics: On average, 2 questions are being asked and 6 answered per second. So this means there’s an astonishing 7,000 questions and an incredible 21,000 answers per hour. That's a total of 28,000 questions and answers being posted every hour. But about two years ago, when Y [...]

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Yahoo's product teams are officially on notice. Shortly after announcing Q1 earnings yesterday, new Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson dropped a bomb during the analysts' call when he said the company will be "shutting down or transitioning roughly 50 properties that don't contribute meaningfully to engagement or revenue." He went on to say that Yahoo's focus will be on its "core media connections and commerce businesses," such as Yahoo News, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Mail and a few other successful Yahoo properties. But what about the 50 properties that are destined to be shut down or transitioned [...]

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ChaCha has announced that its Q&A engine has reached several milestones -- the most notable perhaps being that the Q&A engine answered its billionth question. The question, which I believe can be seen here, was asked on Saturday by a 14-year-old Minnesota boy, and answered by Kenny and Spencer, two ChaCha guides: Q: How do you say friend in Elvish according to the Lord of the Rings? A: Mellon is the Elvish word for 'friend' in 'Lord of the Rings. ChaCha! Ironically, the guide cites this question/answer on WikiAnswers -- a ChaCha competitor -- as the source of his reply. ChaCha s [...]

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That's one of the big questions people are asking after yesterday's launch of Facebook Questions. While many have assumed the answer would be "yes," a Facebook spokesperson tells us that assumption is wrong. Currently, search engines cannot access questions and answers through our Questions product. That may be something we consider for the future but have no current plans to allow it. Facebook is blocking search engines by only showing Questions to logged-in users. Sure enough, a site:facebook.com/questions/ search on Google shows only a handful of results, none of which are actuall [...]

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Yahoo Answers, the number one Answers/Q&A search engine on the web, has announced a series of improvements to the search experience on the site. The new search options are a welcome addition to what was long one of the site's Achilles heels. Here's an overview of some the new tools: Search results can now be sorted by relevance, time (newest/oldest), and number of answers (most/least). These sorting options have been available when browsing categories, but I believe they're new to Yahoo Answers' search results pages. The sorting options appear at the top of the search results. On [...]

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Yesterday the Wall Street Journal ran an article in conjunction with Quora's public beta launch. The article framed the discussion as Quora (and its kin) vs. Google: The race to build a successor to Web search is heating up as a number of young companies seek to fill gaps they see with Google Inc. One of the hopefuls, Quora Inc., made its public launch Monday after months of private testing. The Palo Alto, Calif., company, co-founded by two early Facebook Inc. engineers, wants to collect and organize information people have in their heads but that may not be available online, such as [...]

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Yahoo Answers -- by far the largest answer search engine on the web -- says it passed the one billion answer mark within the past week. In today's announcement, Yahoo has also shared several other interesting stats about the Q&A service: Yahoo! Answers currently receives: 823,966 questions and answers per day... that works out to 34,331 per hour or 572 per minute which is 10 questions and answers posted EVERY second! Last December, Yahoo announced that Answers has more than 200 million users around the world, with 350,000 new visitors per day. Of note: Today's post says Ya [...]

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Yahoo has announced a fairly substantial overhaul of how Yahoo Answers looks and works -- and as a semi-regular user of the site, I'd say these changes are very welcome. The primary functional changes involve a new set of navigation tabs and a new way of browsing the categories on Yahoo Answers. The four new tabs will appear across the site, and hovering over the Browse Categories tab will show a dropdown layer that replaces the old laundry list of categories from the left margin of Yahoo Answers. Yahoo has also changed the general look and feel of the site, and made backend upgr [...]

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Gigaom writes that although Yahoo is number two at search, they are still number one at so many other things. That is exactly what Carol Bartz, Yahoo's CEO, wants to communicate with the world, that Yahoo is not just a search company and does great things also outside of search. Gigaom reached out to comScore to see what exactly Yahoo is number one at and that includes: News Finance Sports Mail Entertainment Games (near tie) Yahoo Answers is not mentioned here, but I believe they dominate that category, as well. We don't often discuss Yahoo's other properties, but it is [...]

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Mahalo Answers is the newest entry into the crowded Q&A reference site space, but it offers a twist that its biggest competitors don't: the chance to earn money by contributing to the service. Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis says the new service is the third and final piece of his original vision for Mahalo, making it a site that combines search, content, and knowledge exchanges. Yahoo Answers is the 800-lb. gorilla in this field, with some astonishing numbers reported earlier this year: 135 million users and 500 million answers worldwide, and growing at a rate of 11 million new answ [...]

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Vanessa Fox had to catch a plane, so I decided to copy Tamar Weinberg's coverage from the Search Engine Roundtable. It's the fourth session of the second day of SMX Social Media and it's all about Wikipedia. Web users rely on community-contributed-content sites such as Wikipedia and Yahoo Answers. These sites enable you to communicate directly with an engaged audience. But contribute to the conversation with care. Too much spin and your credibility will be shot and your brand damaged. You'll come away from this session knowing how these influential sites work and how to participate construc [...]

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Yahoo has added a social networking feature to its Answers service, allowing you to add Yahoo Answers users to your own personal collection of contacts, providing direct access to the questions they ask, answer, and star on Answers. "This allows you to identify individuals on Answers whose knowledge you value and make them part of your friend list," said Tomi Poutanen, Yahoo's director of product management for social search. Answers Network is similar to other social networking services offered by Yahoo, including Flickr contacts, the Del.icio.us network and MyBlogLogs contact lists. Adding [...]

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Yahoo is now allowing users to vote for their favorite questions at Yahoo Answers by adding a star next to interesting or high-quality questions. Similar to Flickr’s "Interestingness [...]

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Via Slashdot, What's the Best Q&A Site? from MIT Technology Review tests several question and answer search engine services. They reviewed and ranked AnswerBag, Askville, Live QnA, Wondir, Yahoo Answers and Yedda. So how did they rank? Out of a total 12 points, Yahoo Answers scored 11 points, coming out tops. Here's the rundown: Yahoo Answers (11 points) Live QnA (7 points) Askville (6 points) AnswerBag (4 points) Wondir (4 points) Yedda Answers (4 points) Hitwise posted figures and data to show market share of the different Q&A search engines. Yahoo Answers with 96% Answerbag w [...]

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Yahoo Answers, arguably one of Yahoo's most successful products of the year, has turned one today. Yahoo has listed The Best of Answers 2006 showing off some of the best user generated questions and answers for the year. You can get a free gift from Yahoo for their birthday over here. They give you a different gift based on your "levels." Since I am a level one, I do not get a gift. Gifts Include: Level 2: Yahoo! Answers sticker Level 3: Yahoo! Answers car magnet Level 4: Yahoo! Answers water bottle Level 5: Yahoo! Answers hat Level 6: Yahoo! Answers mug Level 7: Yahoo! Answers fleece Post [...]

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