TechCrunch Insights on the Answer Wars
TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington has written a great post about the victory of the Yahoo Answers model as opposed to the failed Google Answers. The post uses this case to show how Web 2.0 and the idea of community is more than simply marketing hype.
Google Answers was launched in 2002, when ad revenues were down, and used a more traditional business model – users pay for answers, with Google taking a cut. During its entire run, only 800 “experts” answered questions. Yahoo launched its solution last year, at a time when social media was beginning to take hold. In the Yahoo model, questions are posted for free and anyone can respond with an answer. Readers vote on the answers, enabling the “wisdom of crowds” to determine if the answer is compelling.
Under Yahoo’s approach, as Michael describes it, the “network effect kicked in big time” and Yahoo Answers gets a tremendous number of page views.
It’s still very early in the social networking space and models are still evolving. Yahoo Answers makes it clear that community participation, when leveraged correctly, can generate big results.
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