1. There is a large market for web 2.0 answering services.

2. Size is important for answering services.

3. A failure of Yahoo Answers is that it fails to provide incentives for members to police the content being provided on the site, leading to the proliferation of inaccurate data.

4. Yahoo Answer’s reward system rewards popular information rather then accurate information.

5. The lack of ongoing development for an answer contributes to the spread of misinformation in the Yahoo Answers system.

6. A major strength of Yahoo Answer’s is the ability to relate locally and personally with its users. IE. Asking about local restaurants or subjective opinions.

7. Yahoo Answer’s success comes more in the form of a social networking site rather then a research tool.


I think if you were to look at the article from a business standpoint to learn how to improve your product compared to Yahoo’s, The major opportunity is to develop a system that maintains the fun social networking atmosphere of Yahoo Answer’s and a system that rewards the academic rigor of Wikipedia.

One system I can think of is to have another facet to the site which is to review answers given. Create a system similar to digg.com where members can dig up or down an answer and receive points for it. Then give stronger rewards for members who digg up winning answers.

Another option would be to allow the member to ask a question to manage there answer page by eliminating replies that aren’t on topic.


However this largely depends on what kind of a product you want to provide. Do you want a mix between Yahoo Answer’s and Wikipedia? And is this the best product you can provide?
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YahooAnswers
- is big and popular.
- allows people to post questions.
- allows anyone to respond.
- is inconsistent and not reviewed.
- is more of a social tool than an information resource.
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1. Yahoo Answers can't quite top Mahalo Answers.
a. The user volume is there, but the quality of content is not.
i. The average user is age 13.
1. The average 13 year old shouldn't try to answer people's questions.
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