I feel like I'm missing the big picture when people start talking about question-and-answer sites. The concept has been touted as one of the major players in Web 2.0, alongside social networks and blogs--but honestly, I'm baffled as to why.
Granted, Yahoo! Answers is probably the most successful Yahoo! site created in-house (read: not a third-party snapped up by the company) over the past few years, but I interpret that as a reflection of the ways in which the company's other brands have failed to live up to expectations.
Both Google and Amazon have tested the waters, with Google Answers and Askville, and now AOL has picked acquired Yedda, a Tel Aviv-based site that operates in a very similar way.
The site describes itself as "a leading semantic social search Questions and Answer service." I played around with it this morning, and really, it feels a lot like "Yahoo! Answers," only with a clunkier UI.
"Incorporating Yedda's unique technology into AOL enables us to bring together our traditional search resources and an entire community of people to help users quickly find answers to questions," said AOL's president and COO, Ron Grant, in a release this morning. AOL is likely going to borrow bits and pieces of Yedda's technology and bring them into existing properties, rather than relaunching and rebranding the Israeli site as AOL Answers or something similar.
Either way, my first question for Yedda's users is this: Is this space really as exciting as the major Web players seem to think it is?
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