Yahoo! Answers launches API
Marshall Kirkpatrick
27 comments »
The wildly successful Yahoo! Answers is moving to take its global community of user shared knowledge to the next level with today’s release of an API for outside developers interested in accessing the huge Yahoo! Answers site. The company says there are now 30 million plus answers in the system, from amusing ones to useful ones. Answers has also got an intensely loyal userbase.
Developers will be able to access YA data by user, search keyword, or category. The company says the API is almost identical to the interface used internally to create the recent Yahoo! Messenger/ Yahoo! Answers combo and the flash badge that Yahoo! offers.
The Yahoo! Messenger plug-ins program has seen some amazing things developed. It will be very cool to see if developers can make good use of this newest API.
See also our profile of Yedda, a similar service with a big 2.0 twist and today’s announcement of the new Facebook API.
Wildly successful?!! It’s a mess! People ask things they could find in half a second on Google, and it seems like no one knows a thing about spelling. Ask Metafilter is the example they’d need to follow to be anywhere close to usable.
But yahoo answer gets a whole lot of traffic!
What’s with all these question/answer services? I think yedda or something just launched a week ago too? Funny how they change it from “Q & A” to “People sharing knowledge” - nice buzzword
I just looked at yahoo answers and there are lots and lost of questions.
I searched for a question “How to convert VHS tapes to DVD?” ,not bad , found an answer explaining how it can bo done using DVD writer or also said for small quantity goto local video shop for better price. Not bad at all - not that we cant find the same information googling but still answer was concise and more accutate/
For an average Joe, a direct answer is thousand times better than searching - making answers another buzz space. I think they are definately taking advantage of their largest user base and making them participate in the answers.They already have 30 million answers,imagine in next couple years this could be billion or whaterver, huge huge number of answers, vast content. There may be cluttering,duplicate issues but I think they will figure out a way to solve them as more and more content arrives. May be they will use the community to solve the issues like - users marking “duplicate entery” etc.,
With API, number of answers increase at even faster pace.
I think yahoo is responding well to google’s dominance by focusing on the social search, and morphing all these tools to suit to that.
Too bad most of the questions are ridiculous (ie: why do I pick my nose?). Anyways, I’ve already implemented it on one of my sites. Well done API.
The API is a great idea for this. We get a ton of questions asked of us at Go BIG and it would be nice to be able to cross reference these with a larger database.
I just wish they allowed integration with submitting questions/answers.
“Too bad most of the questions are ridiculous (ie: why do I pick my nose?)”
Average Joe thinks differrent,asks diferrent and the needs are diferrent.They dont check Digg,Slashdot or techcrunch.
You know, I’ve tried the Yahoo and Google services but I’m simply not a fan of the whole “community-based” approach to intelligence…though I respect its merits. That said, I much prefer AskMeNow for mobile Q&A. My boyfriend put me on to it and I’m hooked. I’m no tech expert but I think its far superior. Has anyone tried it yet or am I the only one?
Well personally I think Yahoo Answers is an AMAZING concept. BUT, it is being ruined by people who post stupid questions or questions that can be easily resolved with a simple search.
In fact that is the reason why Yahoo shows search results when you type a question! And it also shows similar questions recently as you type your question. This was done as users posted duplicates of stupid questions.
I am head admin at Scrabulous - http://www.scrabulous.com - where users can play Scrabble online. I answered a few questions about Scrabble online and the next day I get the same questions by new users! These are the types who spoil the site sometimes.
Yahoo! Answers now is like a game for many people. I’m a admin at OnHelp - [url]http://onhelp.org[/url] - which is a realtime snapshot of Yahoo! Answers submissions, answers, votes, and comments using Yahoo! Answers api. Users can play Yahoo! Answers with it.
The concept is new in this respect that it has questions- base of 40 millions of anwers.