Comments on: Yahoo Answers to monetize

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 05:38:41 +0000

Just as a point of clarification Yahoo Answers is an entirely free product. The YPN angle will be to revenue share with people that are providing valuable answers to the community. It will never cost money to ask a question at Yahoo Answers.

By: Caraie

Caraie — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 16:31:23 +0000

heheh http://answers.yahoo.com/question/;_ylt=AhP3t_FaIHl17mmO9tebjmwjzKIX?qid=1006012306431

By: Valentine

Valentine — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 14:48:22 +0000

Hey, I’d gladly pay for the Answer why my site was penalized by Google. Sadly I don’t think even Yahoo Answers could help me there.

By: Julie

Julie — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 14:07:10 +0000

Hey, I never said our tech people here know what they are doing when they design webpages! (Don’t get me started on that...)

Anyways, the Library of Congress has a service as well. http://www.loc.gov. If you’re out of the US, there are still many other similiar options. Just go to your local library website, state library website, or if you’re a student, your university site.

By: Aaron Wall

Aaron Wall — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 05:06:38 +0000

>I don’t see why anyone would pay when librarians are available 24/7 for free.

A real shame the site didn’t work when I entered my zip code. Maybe the page should have said that you MUST live in Ohio to use the service. Maybe the error message could have mentioned that. Maybe Yahoo! has an answer on how to fix that broken form / page / error message.

>Most libraries have a similar service.

But probably have fewer workers and a less diverse set of knowledge that they are willing to freely share...oh yeah, and some of them still have physical borders, and the KnowItNow page title does not even contain geotargeted keywords. The site doesn’t even rank for many relevant queries.

I guess I would rather just pay than know there was something free out there somewhere that was free but exceptionally hard to find.

By: Julie

Julie — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 01:37:51 +0000

Eh, that’s just ONE example. Most libraries have a similar service.

By: nuevojefe

nuevojefe — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 01:34:15 +0000

Only works in Ohio Julie?

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 00:00:31 +0000

The key thing with these services is that you’re not getting generic answers from god-knows-who like on a forum or many web pages, you’re getting the *right* answer.

Searching for the answer involves time you may or may not have, and if the cost if $0.11 to avoid an hour or two of trial-and-error search results then that’s $0.11 well spent as far as I’m concerned.

By: Julie

Julie — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 23:44:13 +0000

People are lazy, that’s why! That and half the people aren’t educated on how to properly use a search engine, so they’d rather take the easy way out and pay someone to do it for them....

Where I work, you wouldn’t believe how many people DON’T know what a search engine is, let alone how to use one. I am speaking of our patrons for the most part. Our staff at least know what a search engine is, though alot of them don’t know how to use them properly.

Sorry...got off the subject a bit there......

By: Josh

Josh — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 23:39:23 +0000

I haven’t ever used these services, but there have been times when I’ve searched for something and not found an answer. If the question had been important enough I might have been willing to pay for it. I tend to use allexperts when I’m in a bind like that though. Not as good as they used to be, but I still get an answer sometimes.