Amazon Launches Answers Service Beta

Fennec writes "Amazon.com has launched a beta of a new service called Askville, yet another online answers service, flavored with "Experience Points, Levels, and Quest Coins." These coins will supposedly become useful some day on another Amazon service that's not actually open yet, Questville. If this virtual currency becomes useful, could Askville fill a place between strictly volunteer systems and pay-for-answer services like the now-defunct Google Answers? Or is it destined to fail in the already-saturated online Q&A market?"

Comments

They wont give you anything interesting

[192939495969798999]

Yahoo Answers has long preported to offer rewards for answering questions, but so far the only rewards I've seen are a bumper sticker and a keychain, and both are awarded to any idiot who answers more than a (very low) set number of questions. Basically, they want to generate free traffic and advertising revenue. I wouldn't use the service unless they were paying cash money, but then of course it would just go away, because as Google found out, not that many people are willing to put up cash for an answer.

Re:45 Quest points awarded

[bad_fx]

Spotted on Askville, from Eric:

Q - What are the main weaknesses of a Gazebo?

Answering a Question

[hhawk]

I just answered a question...

How it worked:
#1 I have an amazon account so I was able to log right it (I like that)
#2 It was hard finding a question that I would actually answer since the high level questions are very broad and I was lookig for a question I really know and understand.
#3 I answered the question
#4 I was asked to LINK web pages, Amazon Merch or a video to my answer
#5 I got a gold coin
#6 I saw other answers to the same question

(see my reply to this question where I will detail my thoughts about the service)

Re :Answering a Question

[hhawk]

So what did I think of the service..

There were some very strange questions in there like "how much would you pay for a Quantum Computer." Some were very detailed like questions about some error condition during a driver installation..

The real question is the value of the answers. I put in my answer and I was able to see what else had been suggested. The question I answered, asked about uploading video from a cell phone to a computer. I took a direct approach and suggested a data cable and then link in some example cables from the Amazon store.

Other people, who answered the same question, detailed how you could upload the video to a web site and then download it to the computer in question.

What you end up with here is a mini "Delphi" study.. [Which is a technique a method of generating ideas and facilitating consensus among individuals" with "expert" knowledge of some topic. You ask a bunch of java programmers how long would it take to program X and the average of the answer is supposed to be better than any one answer.]

I thought my own answer was good because it accurately answered the question. but my answer would require the person to go buy something new, hook it up, etc. The other answers certainly would be something they could do "right now" without any expense.

What I think is good here is that the person who asked the questions will see a range of answers and they can decide which of any of them to follow.

Re:Here's a question

[aplusjimages]

I've used Yahoo! Answers quite a bit. Unfortunately its become more of an area to bash other peoples politics, religion, or sexual orientation, but every once in a while you'll get some serious questions and some serious answers.

Re:Here's a question

[FooAtWFU]

You can actually ask a question on Amazon's service for free, as well. Amazon is the group "paying" for the answers. I suppose they hope to gain from it by people recommending books and other things they sell (they have a field where you can recommend Amazon products along with the answers).

Re:This reminds me...

[Cylix]

I'm a member of ee...

I'm not exactly a fan of the service. The rewards are far far too low. If I spend 30 minutes or longer answer a particularly rough question I might get some points out of it. EE does have some good ones and some good answers.

However, that reward is pretty much nothing compared to what they will get when someone needs to see those answers. I myself started because I /needed/ a question to be answered and search results were turning up nil. (It was apparently answered and the post was quite good).

SO yeah, EE will take my post and generate a good deal of revenue off of that. The other route is to begin answering questions and at some point I get free access? I'm not entirely sure how that works there.

A better replacement would be a profit sharing setup... now if I could just get some capitol.

Re:Experience Points, Levels, and Quest Coins

[h2g2bob]

Wikipedia has its own reference desk where you can ask questions. It's volunteer based and the quality of the answers varies greatly. The idea is to have virtual librarians pointing people to places which can answer more properly, but often the questions are simply answered.