Yahoo! Answers turns one

At one, most human babies are hardly walking, let alone answering difficult questions. But our one-year-old, Yahoo! Answers has already provided 160 million answers to 60 million users around the world. For more on the birthday celebration, visit the Yahoo! Answers blog.

Yahoo! Answers taps into the need that people feel to connect with others through social media, to share knowledge and get their questions answered—in a sense, to personalize the online world. It’s a huge trend, according to a recent Harris Interactive survey. The survey says that fully a third of all adults online have used a Q&A site of one kind or another, and more than half of those say that the information they have gleaned has influenced a decision they made. Check out this press release on the study.

Web publishers, online retailers and the like may be able benefit from putting a Yahoo! Answers badge on their site and by becoming active members of the Answers community, such as SmallBizResource.com has done. By using the badge and answering questions, web publishers can help grow their reputations as “gurus” in their fields, gaining user trust and helping drive traffic. For example, if you have a site that deals in, say, Apples and Oranges, it’s easy to put a badge on your site that allows people to ask questions—which you can then answer—about those tasty fruits.

For more info on how you can use Yahoo! Answers on your own web pages, go to the Answers Web Services page on Yahoo! Developer Network.

Happy Birthday, Answers team. Now blow out your candle.

—Michael Mattis