no.stupid.answers

Good news everyone!

Looks like we aren’t the only ones who love the idea of a wiki-based community-driven Q&A database, where anyone can ask, answer or edit questions and answers. There’s a new friend in town, and that’s Redpoint Ventures, a venture capital firm who believes in the WikiAnswers vision as much as the rest of us do.

Reuters already has the story here. The official Answers.com press release breaks it down like this:

Answers Corporation Announces Private Placement to Redpoint Ventures of up to $13 Million
WikiAnswers Exceeds Three Million Questions

“Through a transaction executed on June 16, 2008, Answers issued $6 million of series A convertible preferred stock, convertible into 1,333,333 shares of common stock at a conversion price of $4.50 per share, with 50% warrant coverage at an exercise price of $4.95. Additionally, Redpoint was issued a second tranche warrant, exercisable over the next 12 months, to purchase up to an additional $7 million of series B convertible preferred stock, convertible into 1,272,727 shares of common stock at a conversion price of $5.50 per share, with 50% warrant coverage at an exercise price of $6.05.”

Is that a lot of jargon for you? Let’s have a word from Answers Corp CEO Robert Rosenschein:

“We are extremely pleased with this strategic investment and validation of both our products and growth opportunity by a top tier Silicon Valley venture capitalist… With this partnership, we gain access to Redpoint’s team, connections and industry experience. The last public company they invested in was Intermix, parent of MySpace, subsequently sold to News Corp in 2006. We look forward to Redpoint’s valuable contribution and support.”

Damn! MySpace, eh? Thems pretty big apples. Speaking of apples, Allen Beasley of Redpoint (I’m sure he likes apples or something) had this to add:

“The Answers properties, but especially WikiAnswers.com, represent the type of high growth opportunity we look for. With over 11 million monthly unique U.S. visitors in May, according to comScore, WikiAnswers is an emerging leader in the social knowledge space. We look forward to working closely with the company to help accelerate its growth.”

Check that out - Allen gets the social knowledge thing. What a great new force to have on board (literally, he’s joining the Board of Directors).

Well, this makes me feel so good I’m going to have an ice cream cone. I wonder if ‘awesome’ is a flavor.

Note: here are other places where the news has been mentioned:

paidContent.org

Washington Post

CNN Money

Triangle Business Journal

Barron’s Tech Trader Daily

Globes

Venture Beat

Red Herring

Market Watch

For today’s WikiAnswers Wednesday question, I’m going to go for painstakingly obvious. I think it goes well with my hazel eyes.

Is there a good social search engine where one can search and have questions answered at the same time?

Hmm… While I work that one out, I’d like to bring up an article I just read on the Reuters site: Answers.com sees growth in wiki responses. It’s a quick exploration into where Answers.com, with WikiAnswers by its side, is going as discussed by some of its head honchos.

“Somewhere between Google Inc and the community-generated Wikipedia, reference website Answers.com aims to build a new growth model.

The site has found its millions of users are keen to get community-written bits of knowledge, known as wikis, alongside its trusted encyclopedia entries.” (source)

Gotta love that explanation. A lot of times, when I’m hanging out with people and they ask me what I do, and I mention WikiAnswers, and their faces get all crinkly like one of those mush-face dogs (see right), I explain it like this:

Me: “You know Wikipedia?”

Crinkly face: “Yes…”

Me: “You know how it’s an encyclopedia that anyone can edit?”

Crinkly face: “Ok…”

Me: “So WikiAnswers is a Q&A community, meaning it’s a giant database of questions and answers, contributed by people from all over the world and all kinds of experience. Everyone contributes a bit, creating one complete answer for each question. You can ask or answer anything you like.”

Crinkly face: “OoOOOOoOooOOOo…”

Back to the article:

“Both sites pull up answers based on a question posed by a user, compared with searches for individual keywords used on sites like industry leader Google.”

“Chief Executive Bob Rosenschein said the company would foster more “cross-pollination” between Answers.com and WikiAnswers.com, including a shared search bar.” (source)

Bringing the reference answers side together with the community-generated answers side sounds like a wonderful idea. It’s going to create a powerful force you might want to call a social search engine.

Hmm, so what was that WikiAnswers Wednesday question again?

This week, Bob Rosenschein, CEO of Answers Corp, took a minute to explain WikiAnswers in depth to Fred Fishkin of Bloomberg Radio. You can listen here in MP3 format (try this if using Windows Media Player). Or read his own words:

“WikiAnswers is in the spirit of Wikipedia. Wikipedia, as everybody knows, is the world’s largest online encyclopedia. Anybody can edit it. You can edit it. If you see a mistake or want to enrich a page, you can make the Wikipedia page better. Of course, there’s back and forth, you can also vandalize a page. But typically, on the average, the quality of a Wikipedia page goes up over time. And that’s why it’s such a trusted, useful source of information.

Well, we are not the Wikipedia of encyclopedias, we are the Wikipedia of online Q&A. That means that if you have a question, you ask it of our community, you can go to WikiAnswers.com, and type in a question. Anything. It could be health related. It could be relationships. It could be automobiles. It doesn’t matter. You ask a question and other people will answer it.”

As WikiAnswers grows, a lot of people seem to be getting it confused with Wikipedia. The two sites are both wikis, growing based on contributors lending knowledge. Like Bob said, though, WikiAnswers is in a Q&A format, differing from the encyclopedic route of Wikipedia.

Sherif Hedayat, a comedian from Dayton, Ohio, came out halfway across the world to visit the head honcho at Answers Corp and get an interview.

Ok, maybe he didn’t venture here just to meet with Bob Rosenschein… But Sherif did make Bob the centerpiece in his sixth webisode of The Sherif Show. Check it out:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlvcTzHFGdg]

Hey, it was a tough question, alright? We just provide the answers, we don’t make ‘em up… well, most of the time.

Top Guru (and CEO) at Answers Corp, Bob Rosenschein, was featured in the “CEO Views” column at AltSearchEngines.com yesterday. His post was about his vision of the “ultimate Answers Engine,” combining the powers of Answers.com, the world’s greatest encyclodictionalmanacapedia, and WikiAnswers, Q&A the Wiki way.

Here’s an excerpt:

“The world of information has evolved from telephones to radios to televisions to the internet… Information has never been more available or expansive. But we find ourselves wading through facts and figures and volumes of webpages overloaded with content… It can be overwhelming, and search engines have certainly come to the rescue for narrowing the web. But if we want to narrow it further – enough to get that one answer we’re seeking in any given search – then hasn’t the time come for an answer machine?

Our goal at Answers Corp is build the web’s ultimate answer engine. The typical search engine is great for getting back thousands of results for deep search. When you want fast info and quick answers to questions, wouldn’t it serve you better to visit an answer engine? That’s what we are building with our two main products, Answers.com and WikiAnswers. Both sites are designed to give you straightforward content, packed with information from either reference sources or the wider human Q&A community.”

Sounds great, Bob… Read the full blog post. And don’t forget to vote for Answers.com in AltSearchEngine’s Search Engine of the Year contest…