That's Not The Answer

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That's Not The Answer

I spent some time on Yahoo! Answers today.

It reminds me so much of Abuzz, the question and answers service we invested in at Flatiron in late '97 or early '98. I suspect that the culture of the Internet has changed a lot since then and hopefully this time, a service like this can get the kind of traction that makes it really useful.

But one thing really bugged me. I went to sign up and like most of these services, there was an option to upload a picture. I do that all the time. But in Yahoo! Answers, the only options you have are to go without a picture, use your Yahoo! 360 picture, or a Yahoo! Avatar.

I have no interest in Yahoo! 360 or a Yahoo! Avatar. So I have to go without a picture?

That's stupid.

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Posted December 8, 2005 in Venture Capital and Technology

Comments

i totally agree with you about the picture. i had the same experience and decided not to go forward because of that...just annoyed me.

Posted by: eric goldstein | Dec 8, 2005 6:18:46 PM

Agreed. We should fix that.

Posted by: Jeremy Zawodny | Dec 9, 2005 1:13:07 AM

I thought the same thing -- lame, lame, lame. It's bad enough that Yahoo is copying other Web services, but copying them badly is inexcusable.

Posted by: Mathew Ingram | Dec 9, 2005 10:54:06 AM

I suspect that Yahoo! Answers will be useful for questions that can be answered quickly without much research. For more complex and research-intensive, I think Google Answers has the right idea with their market model.

Posted by: Randy | Dec 9, 2005 1:57:16 PM

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