no.stupid.answers

Cool new feature to introduce today - freshly baked and right out of the WikiAnswers oven: the Community Forum. Supervisors and contributors alike have been asking for this one for a while, and for good reason.

In the Community Forum, we can post our wants, our likes, our dislikes… We can chat, share funny questions… We can put the social in social knowledge!

One little thing, though: you have to be logged in to view and participate (for now). Aw, not so bad though - all you need is a username, password and email address to sign up and then you get to join the fun!

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

Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard it all: social media, social networks… but have we been paying attention to social knowledge?

Robert Formentin, VP of Advertising for WikiAnswers, presents a column on Online Media Daily about the “socialization of knowledge.” Have a read:

The Socialization Of Knowledge: An Opportunity For Brand Marketers

Formentin defines the big two: social media and social networking, and then moves on to define an area not often discussed, which is social knowledge (see? no link to Answers.com for that one).

As Formentin points out:

“Whereas Social Media is amorphous (the basic “unit” is simply whatever I choose to write) and Social Networking is egocentric (the “unit” is, well, me), Social Knowledge is informative (the “unit” is an article or an answer). It’s a framework where anyone - not exclusively experts- can educate other people by sharing what they know.” (source)

Ok, I can dig. And WikiAnswers fits right in there with its wiki Q&A model: education by and for the masses. Or, to paraphrase from Abe:

“…And those answers of the people, by the people, for the people.“