Answerbag
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Answerbag is a collaborative online database of FAQs, where questions are asked and answered by users. As of December 2006, Answerbag was the second largest Social Q&A site next to Yahoo! Answers [1] In a comparison with Yahoo! Answers and MSN Live QnA, Cnet declared that Answerbag was neck and neck with Yahoo! Answers.[2]
A user who has created an account can ask and answer questions, and suggest new categories. Answers are rated by users as "helpful" or "not helpful". The "helpful" rating will give the answer or question points. The "not helpful" rating will take away points. Users will "level up", achieving levels with a certain amount of points. Users can flag questions as "Wrong Category", "Nonsense", "Spam/Offensive", and "Duplicate". Flagged questions/answers are reviewed by moderators, and if they agree with the flag, they will give the user who flagged the question/answer 5 points and may then be deleted or changed by the moderators. Answers may be commented on. Conversely, when a member consistently submits accurate and well-written replies, others can award "useful" ratings to those answers and increase that user's visibility in a positive manner. Total number of rated answers appear on profiles pages; and on the statistics pages, where members' statistics are shown and compared. Examples include, "Most questions asked" or "Most positive ratings received".
Many questions receive multiple answers. The answers with more ratings appear above those lower in ratings, giving the reader a better way to distinguish good from bad.
In the form of a FAQs site, Answerbag tends to show up on web searches where the search is specifically posed as a question. Answerbag answers may also refer the reader to other websites for more information.
In late 2006, Answerbag received press attention by announcing that they would release a read/write API for their Q&A database.[3]
Answerbag was founded in July 2003, by Joel Downs. The Staff members are "AB-Joel", "AB-Rich" (Rich Gazan), AB-CrazyToon (Sunny Walia) and "AB-Jon" (Jonathan Haddad). In the first months of 2006, Answerbag was acquired by Infosearch. However, on October 3, 2006, Answerbag's management announced that they would part ways with Infosearch Media and join forces with Demand Media, a next-generation media company that has many other content sites.
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[edit] Answerbag API
Answerbag released the first Social Q&A API in February 2007, allowing other sites to read Q&A and contribute new Q&A from their users into the shared Answerbag database.[4]
[edit] Contests
Starting on April 3 and ending on April 30, 2006, the "Answerbag Answer Hunt" took place. The object of the game was to answer all the questions it posted. The user's answers were rated by others, and they had to submit 10 answers to be eligible. The grand prize was $2000 won by Davoomac1 with a total of 214 answers and 169 ratings.[5]
When Answerbag introduced the concept of VideoAnswers(TM) in June 2006, the site launched another contest (the Video Answerbash) in order to motivate its members to start using this new tool. There were several daily and weekly prizes, and a Grand Prize of $5,000.00. This time the prize was won by Lex Friedman (username Lexfri), for his video answer to the question "What is Tivo?" More information will be found on the link.[6], [7]
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Answerbag[7]
- TechCrunch: Read/Write API Coverage[8]
- Socaltech.com: Demand Media Buys Answerbag.com[9]
- Cnet Review: Answerbag vs. Yahoo Answers and MSN Live QnA[10]
- Hitwise: Traffic comparison for Social Q&A Sites[11]
- Cnet: Answerbag offers video answers[12]
- O'Reilly: Web 2.0 Conference Live Q&A via Answerbag.com[13]
- MIT Tech Review: Social Q&A Roundup[14]
- Press release: InfoSearch Acquired Answerbag.com[15]
- Socaltech.com: Interview with Joel Downs, Answerbag Founder[16]
- API Documentation[17]
