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

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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.

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)