How do question-and-answer sites compare as 2006 gives way to 2007? These are social enterprises, connecting questioners with people who answer, or arrange for replies. Wade Roush examines, rates, and ranks a bunch. The winner: Yahoo! Answers.
Notice that Google is missing, since they cut their own social answer effort. Microsoft and Amazon remain in the field as big corporate players. But they, and other, lesser known entities, lag significantly behind socially-minded Yahoo!, in Roush's estimate.
Are there any other studies in this field? Kudos to Roush for the work.
(via Slashdot)
[flack on] On this topic, I must full-on pimp for a service that comes from my day-gig-co (OCLC), and that's Question Point 24/7.
http://www.oclc.org/questionpoint/
Librarians have been providing "social answers" forever, and are now doing it in the age of electronic communications -- starting with phones, and working up through sophisticated systems of databases, email, IM and shared-browsing sessions. We call it "virtual reference."
If your library subscribes to QP (or another, similar system), your librarians may be sharing various virtual reference tasks among a reference cooperative in order to help users while minimizing costs. They may be tapping into a local or global database of answers to previously asked questions. They may be using special software designed to help solve the kinds of problems that folks typically come to libraries to answer. All kinds of cool info-seeking stuff.
QP just logged its 2 millionth question a month or so ago, btw. [/flack off]
Posted by: Andy Havens | December 29, 2006 at 15:12