The most visited website within the Questions and Answers category last week was Yahoo! Answers (answers.yahoo.com), which received 74.05 percent of the market share of U.S. visits. Wiki.Answers.com was the second most visited website receiving 18.35 percent of visits, followed by Answerbag.com, which received 4.42 percent of visits. WikiAnswers, launched in June 2007 has seen its U.S. visits increase 125 percent comparing the week ending Jun. 9, 2007 versus Mar. 15, 2008.

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This is not some dirty little secret; in both the subtitle and very first sentence of a press release, Amazon happily notes that users of its question-and-answer service will be able to work their way towards $50 and $100 gift certificates.  And frankly, I don’t see a problem with that.

Neither, I’d assume, does Askville’s existing user base – the service, although newly open to most of the world, has been in beta testing for some time now.  This helped ensure that it wouldn’t be answer-less when the final launch occurred, and the plan seems to have worked – you’ll find a fair amount of goofy and/or stupid stuff, but there’s genuinely helpful content, as well.

Also, as Joseph Park, Askville’s director, pointed out, “Not everyone finds what they are looking for on the web.”  In a statement, he then continued, “We believe Askville.com can help users find information while also making it a fun experience by sharing your knowledge with other curious, like-minded people.”

It’ll be interesting to see how well Askville works; Amazon’s last big event, the Kindle’s release, occurred with decidedly mixed results.  Still, the whole bribery angle may put Askville one step ahead of its competitors.

These types of question/answer sites are becoming a dime a dozen recently. Yahoo clearly has the bulk of the “answers” market currently, but other companies such as Amazon (Askville) are looking to leverage themselves as legitimate competitors in the user-generated Q&A sector.

Now, you can add AOL to the list of “answers” services as well.

A UK version of the service launched in late December. According to AOL, the site is already full of numerous “how-to” articles as well as answers to a wide variety of questions covering topics ranging from pole dancing to photography.

David Gilbey, VP Content and Services at AOL UK says “AOL Show Me is a great product that is incredibly useful while still being a lot of fun. It allows users to check out how to do those little things like change a light bulb or wire a plug, that perhaps they have always been too embarrassed to ask.”

AOL Show Me offers a couple unique facets that Yahoo Answers currently lacks. While being able to offer answers in a conventional text format, users can also freely upload their videos and picture as well, sharing their knowledge with the Internet community at large.

Even with the unique features, AOL has a metric ton of ground to cover if it wants to compete with Yahoo in the realm of user-generated answers.

The gap will most likely get wider before it becomes any smaller, as Yahoo has implemented several Digg-like social bookmarking features into its answers service. These features as a whole have generated a very positive response from the service’s user base.

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Joe is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.

NowNow Gives Answers To Mobile Users

NowNow sounds more like something people say to the dog when she’s begging at the table. “Now now, don’t do that.” With the new service from Amazon, people will get answers that are a little more informative than a friendly wag.

Any mobile device that supports email, like the typical Blackberry, Treo, or other smartphone, should be able to use NowNow. During the beta period, asking questions will be free. Eventually there will be a charge but they do not anticipate it being greater than 25 cents per question.

NowNow pays its researchers to look up answers to questions, and does this through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service. They pay based on the quality of answers, so NowNow encourages users of the service to rate the answers they receive.

If the first round of up to three answers did not prove satisfactory, NowNow allows one free resubmit of the question. That leads to the question being reposted at the Mechanical Turk website under the NowNow section.

The site currently accepts new members by invite only. Amazon has NowNow in beta testing, as it does the newly launched Askville.

NowNow is being positioned as an alternative to web search on a mobile device. Considering that mobile web searches do not cost anything beyond the usual terms and conditions of a given person’s service plan, and that web search on a mobile should be much faster than waiting for a human response, it almost seems like Amazon is operating NowNow for research reasons, rather than as a true new service.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

But look out Yahoo because now Amazon has launched a similar user driven Question and Answer service called Askville. The product has an intuitive interface and has the potential for a very strong user base.

Askville is a place where you can share and discuss knowledge with other people by asking and answering questions on any topic. It’s a fun place to meet others with similar interests to you and a place where you can share what you know. You can learn something new everyday or help and meet others using your knowledge. Askville even helps you learn by giving you cool tools to help you find information online while you are answering questions.

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Manoj has been working in the search engine marketing industry since 2002. He started out as a software developer but now provides in-depth web site analysis using web analytics.

http://www.enquiro.com

Manoj is also the author of Web Analytics World. Web Analytics is an essential component in developing a successful
online campaign. Help convert visitors into customers by understanding
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The announcement comes shortly after Google’s decision to stop development of its own Q&A project.

So what exactly is Askville going to look like? Here’s an except from the FAQ:

I wonder what Amazon is trying to accomplish with this kind of service?

Yahoo’s “Answers” feature has a clear benefit in that it is incorporated into the search results, so there’s a nice measure of integration between paid, organic, and user-generated results for a given topic.

Also, reading through the FAQ is reminiscent of preparing for Dungeons & Dragons campaign. All this talk of “experience points” and “quest coins” makes me wonder if I should go out and buy some dice and roll up a character sheet so I can join in on the party.

In any event, it will be interesting to see where Amazon decides to go with this venture. It looks like participation is invite-only, but I’ve decided to throw some questions out there for the sake of principle. If you’re a beta participant, be a good sport and ask these for me!

“What’s so newsworthy about Paris Hilton, anyway?”

“Is Digg actually an enemy of free speech?”

“Will the Patriots win the Super Bowl this year?”

“Is there anyone more lovely than Kate Beckinsale?”

“SEO: Is it bullsh*t?” (Okay, I can’t take credit for this one. You can submit it on behalf of Jason Calacanis, Sequoia Capital.)

That’s ought to be enough for a good start, don’t you think?

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Joe is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.