QP Users Council Discussion: Commerical Ask Communities

Vince Mariner (the Joe and I of PA) recently asked the QP Users Council (formerly the Transition Task Force, a council on which Joe and I sit) about Amazon's AskVille:

"Is it old news or is this really something new from Amazon? Anyway, I wonder if there is a way to integrate their presentation of “topics needing answers” into the QuestionPoint Shared Follow-up."

Amazon's AskVille was actually launched in December of last year- I don't think they did a complete marketing blitz when they launched but I've noticed this popping back up more recently. AskVille, like Yahoo! Answers has a "currency" (or points, with Yahoo! Answers) system depending on how active you are with the community. Apparently the "currency" will be usable on Questville.com where "users will be able to participate in contests, exchange coins with fellow users, earn additional coins, and redeem them for other prizes/rewards." Questville.com is scheduled to launch in 2007 but from what I thought, it was supposed to have launched already.

I think it would be a great idea to be able to incorporate their "stumpers" into QP for the Librarian community to answer but I think the main thing behind Yahoo! Answers (http://answers.yahoo.com), AskVille, MSN's QnA Live (http://qna.live.com) and Wondir (http://www.wondir.com) is that they build a community around the question and answers / topics. That's one thing we don't do- for better and worse. While our customers may feel alone- they can also feel better because if they have a sensitive topic, they can be completely anonymous, their questions aren't out there for the world to see, and they will be getting better answers.

Building a community around questions and answers / topics also reminds me of the those folks who are using their library blog for QandA- either officially, or unofficially by having the librarians actively reading customer comments and starting a discussion by commenting back. Just another way we are getting out there and actively going to the info need instead of waiting for the questions to come to us.

WherAmazon's AskVille was actually launched in December of last year- I don't think they did a complete marketing blitz when they launched but I've noticed this popping back up more recently. AskVille, like Yahoo! Answers has a "currency" (or points, with Yahoo! Answers) system depending on how active you are with the community. Apparently the "currency" will be usable on Questville.com where "users will be able to participate in contests, exchange coins with fellow users, earn additional coins, and redeem them for other prizes/rewards." Questville.com is scheduled to launch in 2007 but from what I thought, it was supposed to have launched already.

I think it would be a great idea to be able to incorporate their "stumpers" into QP for the Librarian community to answer but I think the main thing behind Yahoo! Answers (http://answers.yahoo.com), AskVille, MSN's QnA Live (http://qna.live.com) and Wondir (http://www.wondir.com) is that they build a community around the question and answers / topics. That's one thing we don't do- for better and worse. While our customers may feel alone- they can also feel better because if they have a sensitive topic, they can be completely anonymous, their questions aren't out there for the world to see, and they will be getting better answers.

Building a community around questions and answers / topics also reminds me of the those folks who are using their library blog for QandA- either officially, or unofficially by having the librarians actively reading customer comments and starting a discussion by commenting back. Just another way we are getting out there and actively going to the info need instead of waiting for the questions to come to us.

If the goal is to help people when they have questions (and answers, really, make ppl feel like they aren't alone because if there is an answer, someone else has tread this ground before), what's the best way of doing that? Do we build communities around knowing certain topics or just around knowing? Do we build communities at all? Do we let people stay secluded from others asking questions? Do we let ppl "evesdrop" and see what others are asking (real time question feed on Askusnow.info?)?

What do the customers want?

**Update: This discussion has morphed into a discussion of "Reference 2.0" on the QuestionPoint blog.**