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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?"

9 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Here's a question by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Funny

    Has anyone actually used one of these services for a real inquiry?


    YES

          That will be $15.95 please.

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    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  2. 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.

  3. 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?

  4. 45 Quest points awarded by weinrich · · Score: 4, Funny

    45 Quest points awarded for providing the Accepted Answer. Points go to Ogre_KLR, a level 5 Mage with +14 HP and a penchant for scrolls of invisibility.

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    Error: .sig not found, using /etc/passwd instead
    1. Re:45 Quest points awarded by Bloke+down+the+pub · · Score: 4, Funny

      What are the main weaknesses of a Gazebo?
      It can only cure a disease if the patient believes it will.
      --
      It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
    2. Re:45 Quest points awarded by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      I think you'll find that's a placenta...

  5. They wont give you anything interesting by 192939495969798999 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

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    stuff |
  6. Answering a Question by hhawk · · Score: 3, Informative

    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)

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    http://www.hawknest.com/
  7. Replying to my own question. by DZR · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Perplexed as to why Amazon would launch two separate Question and Answer services, NowNow and AskVille I did some googling and thought I'd share what I came up with.

    Firstly, it turns out that someone has already asked this on AskVille and the answers are fairly to the point. Also O'Reilly Radar has a post about the two services.

    The gist of it is: AskVille is like Yahoo! Answers and NowNow is like 82ASK. NowNow is specifically set up for mobile users who need to find answers quickly. Questions are farmed out to Mechanical Turk where people are paid real cash money to answer questions.

    However, Amazon have completely dropped the ball with NowNow:

    1. The interface is mobile email! It's specifically for mobile phones and yet they've used email instead of the obvious choice of SMS.
    2. Because they've chosen email instead of SMS they've also made the billing procedure more complicated. While the service is beta it is free, but I presume that in order to use it when it goes live you will have to set up some sort of Amazon account. So you have to know in advance that you might one day need to use the service, unlike with 82ASK.
    3. Mechanical Turk is notoriously badly paid, and absolutely anyone can join it. So the researchers aren't vetted or trained like 82ASK's texperts are, and they're nowhere near as well paid as texperts, so they can't guarantee the same quality of answers as 82ASK.

    AskVille has some interesting twists on Yahoo! Answers. Like an online game answers earn virtual money, and there is more community vetting and rating of answers and answerers then there is on Yahoo! Answers.

    If they'd been really innovative they would have merged the best bits of each into on single product with both mobile and web access. If they'd done that there would be reason for 82ASK to be worried. But as it is I think they've blown it.