Yahoo has released a new mobile version of Yahoo Answers. For users, this means a more convenient way to access what I believe is the biggest Answers site on the web from their mobile phones in an optimized, less painful fashion. With Yahoo Answers for mobile, users can:

Yahoo announced today that Yahoo Answers has served its billionth answer.

"From the small beginnings when we received our first answer from the public back in December 2005 we have now become the largest and most popular global Q&A site on the internet, available in 9 languages across 21 countries," says the Yahoo Answers Team. "The volume of contributions we receive from the Answers community on a daily basis is mindboggling."

MerchantCircle, a social network for local businesses, which boasts over a million businesses, announced an expanded partnership with Demand Media. I spoke with Darren Waddell, VP of marketing for MerchantCircle and Sean Pate, the company’s Director of PR about this and some other news.

MSN QnA isn’t long for this world; an announcement posted yesterday on its official blog made clear that Microsoft’s site designed to help people share information and opinions will close on May 21st.  At the same time, Yahoo Answers appears to be healthier than ever.

Yahoo promotes all sorts of things – options relating to search, shopping, and mail, among other subjects, are given the top spaces and bold boxes on its homepage.  But Yahoo Answers is near the top of a side column thanks to alphabetization, and new stats reveal that the service is extraordinarily popular.

The market share of U.S. visits to a custom category of Question and Answer websites has increased 118 percent for the week ending Mar. 15, 2008, compared to the same week in 2007, Hitwise reported today. Over the past two years, U.S. visits to this category have increased 889 percent comparing Feb. 2008 versus Feb. 2006.

Yahoo’s efforts at heightening awareness of global warming has drawn a question from a very high-profile person for the Yahoo Answers audience.