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Amazon Launches Answers Service Beta

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the more-you-know dept.

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?"

2 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. This sounds more like a game... by Yoozer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This sounds more like a game than an actual useful search engine.

    On the other hand, having services like this and virtual cash in several games, maybe it's time to propose some kind of uniform standard instead of getting a huge selection of virtual currency (which will happen anyway because lots of different standards for the same are fun). Exchange Quest Coins against Warcraft Gold so you can finally buy that weapon, sell off your character and use the profit to buy Wii points so you can get more virtual console games, in the meantime paying a percentage to whatever virtual bank pops up in Second Life or so. Just great.

  2. Re:Here's a question by Psycosys · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why bother with one of these services when I can just Ask Slashdot for free?