Gadgetopia

Amazon Askville takes on Yahoo! Answers: first look: Amazon is heading into the “Answers” space with “Askville.”

Google ended Google Answers last year. Yahoo Answers kind of sucks, for reasons I explained here. The only one I’ve had a good experience with is LinkedIn Answers, a site on which Aaron makes fun of my prolificness.

At their core, both Amazon’s Askville and Yahoo!’s Answers sites function more or less as a traditional forum, with slightly different tools and a general user interface that evolves the “discussion thread” concept into one user asking a question, with other users with knowledge on the topic chiming in with an answer. Users are then able to rate answers in an appreciative effort to highlight each other’s expertise in specific topics. This emphasis on asking a specific question and highlighting relevant answers generally keeps the discussion more on track than in your typical discussion forum.