There was no swimming
in the lake that was made
by damning a river
but sailing was permitted,
and running across
the water in the wind
you might lean the wrong way
and get thrown in.
In the cool fresh water
soon would come the question
of how much time you had
for a swim.
Because it might not be long
before your bedraggled
bug boat turned turtle.
Then you could only sit and wait
for the roar of the powered guards.
Yahoo! Answers has attracted a large number of active users. As of March, 2008, Yahoo! Answers had perhaps 25 million U.S. users and 135 million users world-wide. The U.S. and world-wide users have created 237 million and 500 million answers, respectively. The number of users is currently growing about 35% per year in the U.S. and 85% per year world-wide.[1]
Yahoo! Answers organizes users’ interactions in a “question and answer” (Q&A) format. Q&A is a extremely simple, widely understood communicative form. It’s one of the first forms that kids learn (young kids’ incessant question-asking is a common source of temporary parental insanity). Communicative forms that require relatively little effort to use are relatively attractive to users.
Q&A supports both information-transfer and sociality in communication. In Yahoo! Answers, some top level categories such as “cars & transportation,” “science & mathematics,” and “local business” favor information transfer. See, e.g., “What’s the best way to make your exhaust pipes on your truck as loud as possible?” Much different from such questions are calls for empathy (“Is looking different ok?”), relationship advice, and other, non-factual discussion requests. Q&A is a communicative form with much more general value than just for seeking high-quality knowledge.
User behavior in Yahoo! Answers suggests the importance of immediate, personal user interests. The shares of users that ask questions, answer questions, and vote on the best answer to questions are 70%, 55%, and 24%, respectively.[2] A user’s immediate needs drive a question. Answering a question is a response to an opportunity that arises. Voting on the best answer to a question requires evaluating what others have written about another’s question. Decreasing user activity is associated with less immediate, less personal user interest.
Yahoo! Answers is facing increasing competition for users. Google launched Q&A sites in Russia and China in June and August of 2007, and more countries are expected to be added to the service.[3] Microsoft Live Search QnA, launched in Beta in May, 2006, is being steadily improved. WikiAnswers is a Q&A site that has grown rapidly in the past year, attracting a significant share of Q&A activity. The increasing competition for Yahoo! Answers indicates recognition of the value of Q&A for attracting users and generating user activity.
* * * * *
Notes:
[1] Figures from Matt McGee. I have not been able to find the company source for this data. A Yahoo! Answers blog post for Jan. 10, 2008, states, “Since the U.S. launch in December 2005, Yahoo! Answers has become the largest knowledge-sharing community on the Web with more than 20 million users in the U.S. and more than 90 million worldwide.” McGee’s U.S. data indicate a ratio of answers per user of 7.6 and 9.5 in Aug. 2007 and Mar. 2008, respectively. Data from Gyöngyi et. al. (2008), mainly for early 2006 and English-language, probably U.S. only, has 11.0 answers per user. Data from Adamic et. al. (2008), for one month, apparently in the second half of 2007, given that about 11 million answers were created in the month, English-language, probably U.S. only, has 11.8 answer per user. The number of answers is more obviously defined than the number of users. The McGee user count may include some users who registered but did not engage in any activity.
[2] Gyöngyi et. al. (2008) p. 5, Fig. 4.
[3] Google Answers, which was an attempt to establish a commercial market for information, shut down for lack of success in December, 2006. Q&A as a communicative form was only a small component of that endeavor.
References:
Adamic, Lada A., Jun Zhang, Eytan Bakshy, Mark S. Ackerman, Knowledge Sharing and Yahoo Answers: Everyone Knows Something. WWW 2008 / Refereed Track: Social Networks & Web 2.0 -Analysis of Social Networks & Online Interaction, Beijing, China, 2008.
Gyöngyi, Zoltán, Georgia Koutrika, Jan Pedersen, Hector Garcia-Molina. Questioning Yahoo! Answers. First Workshop on Question Answering on the Web (at the 17th International World Wide Web Conference), Beijing, China, 2008.
This coming week in the U.S. is Public Service Recognition Week. Everyone should celebrate this important week. To help you, the Public Employees Roundtable at the Council for Excellence in Government has created a 24-page “How to Celebrate Handbook.”
From the “Did You Know?” section of the Handbook:
A fine example of dedication to public service is Smokey Bear. Often incorrectly called “Smokey the Bear,” Smokey Bear is a character in a long-running public service campaign to prevent forest fires. According to Wikipedia, “Smokey’s forest fire prevention campaign has reduced the area lost annually from 22 million to 4 million acres (89,000 to 16,000 km²).”
Government agencies and laws have played an important role in supporting Smokey Bear’s efforts:
The fictional character Smokey Bear is administered by three entities: the United States Forest Service, the National Association of State Foresters, and the Ad Council. Smokey Bear’s name and image are protected by U.S. federal law, the Smokey Bear Act of 1952 (16 U.S.C. 580 (p-2); 18 U.S.C. 711), which provides for actual imprisonment for those who manufacture goods depicting Smokey Bear without having secured a license from the government. [Wikipedia]
If these licenses were auctioned, they would provide precedent for the auction of radio spectrum licenses around the world.
In a bin the size
of a small sand box,
red worms consume
egg shells, digest peels of
hydroponic carrots,
and give up their castings
to feed tarragon,
oregano,
and sorrel.