Yahoo Answers goes into the social Q&A competition with one huge
advantage: it’s heavily promoted elsewhere on Yahoo.com sites, which
collectively attract more visitors every day than any Web destination
except MySpace. The site, which is only one year old, has become the
second most popular reference site after Wikipedia. It has 60 million
unique users, as well as the largest collection of answers of any
Q&A site: more than 160 million as of late November 2006, up from
70 million in June 2006 . Some 60 million of those answers are in English; the rest are in a mix of world languages.
The site has a clean, attractive, and simple interface. The point
system is nothing out of the ordinary, but there is a very convenient
"My Q&A" page where users can track their points as well as the
questions they’ve asked and answered. One fun twist: users can choose
and customize their own cartoon( also known as an avatar) self-portraits, which appear alongside
their questions and answers and give the site a surprisingly jaunty
feel.
What is the best way to make a grilled cheese sandwich? I didn’t
bother to post this question on Yahoo Answers, since the site already
contains more than 100 questions and thousands of answers relating to
grilled cheese sandwiches. I can’t begin to list them all; just go to https://answers.yahoo.com and type "grilled cheese sandwich" into the "Ask tab"