In October we blogged (via a post on Google Blogoscoped) that Amazon.com was launching their own Q&A service (beta) named askville. In the past few weeks, we’ve been noticing posts/ads/reminders/promos (you make the call) about the askville Q&A service appearing on Amazon.com results pages.

Here’s a screen cap of one of them. Look for the Askville box (with a link to the service) in the lower left corner of a results page. askville’s motto is: “ask…answer….meet…play.” Make sure not to confuse that with Survivor’s motto: “Outwit, Outplay, Outlast.”

After clicking the askville link, this page appears (screen cap) stating you are leaving the Amazon.com site. A click here, leads to the askville site. You don’t have to log-in to read questions and answers but to ask a question or share an answer you’ll need to be logged-in with you Amazon.com ID. The database is searchable and a tag cloud visible.

See Also: askville blog
The latest post touches on searcher confusion (Is askville the place to get customer service help?). It also mentions spam issues and says:

Ultimately, the fate of Askville is in your hands. If you feel someone is abusing Askville, please report abuse on the question or answer. If a user has received enough report abuse flags, we will investigate the user and take appropriate action.

Finally, you’ll read about obtaining points and “quest coins”. These Quest Coins and points for those who answer queries will be used in another new Amazon.com service coming in 2007 named Questville.com (site not yet live). The domain was registered on May 7, 2006 (to Domains by Proxy), then transferred to Agoram, Inc. (an Amazon.com domain name holding service?) in October, 2006 and most recently to Amazon.com.

Finally, while browsing the askville database we noticed that Amazon.com is planning an e-mail based, Q&A service for mobile users named Nownow.com. It’s currently in private beta. What makes it different? Humans will power the e-mail based question..

From the FAQ:

NowNow is a service that mobile users can use to find answers to any question via mobile email. When you post a question to NowNow via email (ask@nownow.com), our NowNow workers will surf the web to find the answer for you. NowNow workers are users who are being paid to search the web on your behalf. NowNow bypasses the need for mobile users to go to the web to find answers to questions as NowNow will send you an email with up to 3 answers to each question you ask. We have not finalized our pricing for each question, however, we expect each question will cost less than $0.25. During this beta-test period all questions asked will be FREE.

NowNow will use Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (mturk.com) service.

The FAQ provides no info about the sources that will be available, [only open-web?]. Also, no info about the requirements, skills and/or training a NowNow worker will need to have. Will NowNow be the new home for former Google Answers researchers?



Questions. What if the answer is not on the web? Will a searcher have to pay to be told to go to the library? Will a person have to pay for an article or purchase a book they could get for free from their university or public library online? Will authority, scope, and currency of the info being shared be considered before sharing? Do critical info skills mean still mean something? How much time will a researcher have to answer a query. I can easily imagine a query where the user wants quick but detailed list of “all of the businesses” in New York City or the market for children’s aspirin in Asia or a non-partisan look at a company’s history. What about kids paying to get their homework done? Expert homework help services also exist for free.

As we’ve said before and we will say again. it’s to bad (sad, really) that while services like NowNow come around but very few people know about the FREE and expert powered services (not only in terms of skills but also in terms of resources available like FREE full text databases) that libraries and other subject expert communities offer 24×7x365 via IM, email, even the plain ol’ telephone.

This post not only discusses QandA services but also the AskA+ Locator. Direct links to expert knowledge bases, many that also offers free QandA services.

For more, see:
++ Ask A Question: Virtual Reference Services for Non-Librarians, What Are They and How to Access These FREE Services ++

POSTSCRIPT:
In November, we posted about another new Amazon.com service, ClickRiver.

Clickriver Ads is an advertising program — currently in beta — that allows businesses to place sponsored links on Amazon.com®, next to search results and on product detail pages. Clickriver Ads presents a unique opportunity to advertise services and products that complement the selection on Amazon.com, an online marketplace with tens of millions of active customer accounts.

The service is still in beta mode (applications being accepted). However, over the past couple of weeks, we’ve started to notice ads on Amazon.com results pages that use A9 in the URL. Here’s an example. Note the sponsored link after the second result. Hover over and see an A9 url. The challenge is determining what is a Clickriver ad versus a Google. Not easy.

Using an HTTP Status checker, some of these ad URLS redirect to Google (likely Google ads) while others do not (possibly Clickriver ads).

Also worth noting that some Amazon sponsored links also have a link that reads, “Advertise on Amazon.” A click of that link goes directly to Clickriver. In case you’re unable to see this type of ad, here’s a screen cap.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007 and is filed under Information Industry, Technology and Internet, Web Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.