Every big publisher on the Web wants to be able to serve up ad-friendly videos, but creating them can be a pain. But there are already plenty of high-quality videos out there in every subject imaginable. With that in mind, Answers.com has quietly launched Video Answers with about 200,000 videos from video distribution network 5min on everything from home repair and fashion tips to cars and travel.
Answers.com Videos consists of up to 200,000 videos in over 200 categories. The videos come to Answers.com from 5min Media, which has syndicated videos on the site for over a year – you’ve probably seen them in ReferenceAnswers topic pages, embedded between other content sources.
We’re pretty sure Answers.com CEO Bob Rosenschein speaks on behalf of the entire content team when he says: “Our mission is to offer answers about anything, accessible on a range of platforms and formats. 5min Media provides us the opportunity to offer answers in video form in addition to our community-generated and reference content. Now Answers.com delivers the answers best displayed with instructional visuals – like how to create ringtones for your iPhone or how to make the perfect steak.”
The WikiAnswers folks are pleased to present an old concept with a new twist: the How-To AnswerThon. It’s not just about answering or editing, it’s about answering How-To questions on WikiAnswers.
Know how to tune a guitar? Know how to bake a pecan pie? Know how to adjust the settings on an iPhone?
Now’s your chance to share your knowledge while winning prizes. The AnswerThon is taking place this weekend, November 8-9, starting at midnight late Friday-early Saturday and ending at midnight late Sunday-early Monday. So as soon as you’ve finished voting in the U.S. presidential election – and answering elections questions, of course – get your list of questions ready and start preparing for this weekend!
Tip: Prepare a list of How-To Q&As in advance that you can quickly enter into WikiAnswers during the eligible AnswerThon period. That’s called seeding questions, and that way you don’t have to go searching and wasting precious time during the AnswerThon.
Tip: You can click here for a list of eligible questions.
Tip: You can limit your search to how-to questions on specific topics using the advanced search feature and selecting the “How-To” category.
Only new answers to questions starting with “How to,” “How do I” or “How do you” will count toward your total. Be sure to read the complete set of rules to fully understand what counts and what doesn’t.
The participants who answer the most such questions walk away with prizes and badges. Did I mention the first prize is a $200 gift certificate to Amazon.com?
If you’re anything like me, you’re a last-minute shopper. And, while there may be no such thing as a stupid answer, there are stupid gift ideas…
The art of gift giving is to focus on the person receiving the gift as opposed to… yourself. Keep the age, background and interests of your generosity’s target in the forefront of your mind. Would you give your teenage daughter a fancy pen? Your boss a pair of sneakers?
Since the start of the ‘season of giving’ (or is it ‘season of buying?’), we’ve been receiving Santa-sized sackfuls of questions on WikiAnswers concerning what are appropriate gifts for seniors/toddlers/workmates and everyone else in our lives.
