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Yahoo Answers

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Yahoo! Answers
Company typeSubsidiary
IndustryInternet, Online community
PredecessorAsk Yahoo!
FoundedDecember 8, 2005; 20 years ago (2005-12-08) (beta release)
FounderYahoo!
DefunctMay 4, 2021 (2021-05-04)
FateService discontinued; URL redirected to Yahoo! homepage
Headquarters
Sunnyvale, California
,
United States
Area served
Worldwide (except Japan, where a version continues)
Key people
Ofer Shaked (Director of Engineering at launch)
ProductsCommunity-based question-and-answer platform
OwnerYahoo! (a subsidiary of Apollo Global Management as of 2021)
Websiteanswers.yahoo.com

Yahoo! Answers functioned as a community-based Q&A platform under the ownership of Yahoo!, where participants could pose questions and provide answers, with the ability to upvote responses to enhance their prominence. The site categorized inquiries into various sections and sub-sections encompassing areas like business, finance, electronics, entertainment, science, politics, and travel. Despite its extensive coverage, it attracted criticism for the prevalence of unclear questions and unreliable answers.

On April 5, 2021, Yahoo! declared that Yahoo! Answers would be discontinued. The service was switched to a read-only mode on April 20, 2021, which prevented the posting of new questions and answers. It fully terminated operations on May 4, 2021, at which point its URL redirected users to Yahoo!'s main homepage. However, an independent Japanese version continues to operate.

History

Founded on March 2, 1995, by Jerry Yang and David Filo, Yahoo! began as a search directory before expanding into a comprehensive Internet portal that included the "Yahoo! Answers" service. The platform entered an internal alpha testing phase in mid-2005 under the leadership of Director of Engineering Ofer Shaked. Its beta release was made public on December 8, 2005, followed by a full launch on May 15, 2006.

Yahoo! Answers succeeded Ask Yahoo!, the company's earlier Q&A service which was phased out in March 2006. The platform encouraged user engagement through a points-based reward system and drew inspiration from Naver's Knowledge iN model. It supported twelve languages with specialized versions tailored for Asian markets that accommodated non-Latin scripts. An Arabic-language Q&A site called Seen Jeem, operated via Yahoo! subsidiary Maktoob, ran until 2010. Meanwhile, the Chinese-language Yahoo! Knowledge was active until 2021. In Japan, the service is branded as .

On December 8, 2016, Yahoo! introduced a dedicated mobile application named Yahoo! Answers Now (previously known as Yahoo! Hive) available on iOS and Android platforms to broaden mobile user engagement.

Closure

Yahoo! announced on April 5, 2021, that Yahoo! Answers would cease operations on May 4, 2021. After April 20, posting new questions or answers was disabled, and all content was scheduled for deletion after June 30. Upon shutting down on May 4, users were redirected initially to a Yahoo Help page before being sent to Yahoo's primary homepage. The decision to close the site was attributed to diminishing user activity. During the read-only interval, archivists including the Archive Team endeavored to preserve nearly 4.75 TB of data; however, this did not encompass the entire database. Notably, this closure coincided with the sale of Yahoo’s broader brand to Apollo Global Management.

The Japanese iteration of the platform—Yahoo! Chiebukuro (Yahoo!知恵袋)—remains unaffected and continues to operate.

Site operation

Yahoo! Answers permitted questions aligned with its community standards. Participation did not require payment; contributors retained ownership rights over their submissions while granting Yahoo! a non-exclusive license to use content royalty-free. Direct chatting was prohibited despite certain categories allowing subjective opinions. Users had the option to display their Yahoo! Messenger IDs.

Content moderation depended largely on user-generated reports weighted by each reporter’s reliability score. Posts flagged by a sufficient number of trusted users were removed but could be contested through appeals; these appeals influenced reporter credibility ratings. Persistent or severe breaches could result in account suspension or termination.

Users needed a Yahoo! ID to participate and could personalize their profiles with avatars until the discontinuation of Yahoo! Avatars in 2012. When providing answers, users were encouraged to cite sources when referencing external information.

Questions remained open for responses for four days; askers were able to select a best answer after waiting one hour. Posting new questions required users to have a minimum positive score of five points.

The platform’s points system motivated participation while limiting spam activities by unlocking additional features as users advanced in levels. Although points held no monetary value, they served as indicators of user engagement. A "Best Answer" awarded ten points to contributors. The voting mechanism was removed in April 2014. On occasion, staff granted extra points for high-quality contributions to incentivize dedicated "power users" who actively supported the community.

Level table

Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5 Level 6 Level 7
Points 1–249 250–999 1,000–2,499 2,500–4,999 5,000–9,999 10,000–24,999 25,000+
Questions 5 10 15 20
Answers 20 80 120 160
Commentaries 10 20 30 40
Stars 10 100
Evaluation permission No Yes

Note: The limits shown applied on a daily basis.

New users commenced at level1 with an initial allocation of 100 free points. At the outset, users began at level0 and were permitted only a single answer before advancing to level1.

Prior to April 20, 2012, users who reached level5 or higher had the ability to submit an unlimited number of questions, answers, and comments. To combat spam and reduce low-quality content, Yahoo! Answers later introduced caps on these contributions. Up until April 2014, community members could select a best answer if the original poster did not; this option was subsequently removed.

Top Contributor

The platform's point system encouraged users to maximize their daily participation. Users who met and sustained a minimum contribution level earned an orange "Top Contributor" (TC) badge displayed beneath their profile picture. This badge was applicable across all categories once obtained in any one category. A user could hold TC status in as many as three categories simultaneously. The roster of Top Contributors was refreshed on a weekly basis.

Although the exact criteria for TC designation were not publicly disclosed, it was widely believed to involve maintaining a weekly answer quota within a category, achieving at least a 12% rate of best answers, reaching at least level2 (with some exceptions), and concentrating efforts within a particular topical area.

This feature was introduced on March 8, 2007.

Staff

Staff members were identified by distinctive badge icons.[1]

Official

Official badges were assigned to public figures and government entities such as health organizations.[1]

Knowledge Partners

These badges represented companies or organizations that contributed expert knowledge to the Yahoo! Answers community.[1]

Academic studies

Analyses of Yahoo! Answers revealed distinct user roles: "specialists," who responded based on their own expertise, and "synthesists," who aggregated information from external references; synthesists typically earned more points.[2] Adamic and colleagues distinguished between "answer people," who concentrated on factual categories, and "discussion people," active in general interest topics; they also noted that longer answers were more likely to be selected as the best.[3] Research by Kim and Oh identified completeness of content, practicality of solutions, and personal agreement as important factors affecting the choice of best answer.[4]

Quality of answers

Research indicated that Yahoo! Answers offered wide-ranging but often shallow knowledge, with factual questions generally attracting fewer high-quality responses.[5] The frequent use of informal language alongside numerous spelling and grammar mistakes contributed to perceptions of the site as more entertainment than a trustworthy information source.Cite error: The opening <ref> tag is malformed or has a bad name The platform’s expansion correlated with a decline in answer quality.Cite error: The opening <ref> tag is malformed or has a bad name Incentive structures favored participation volume over accuracy, which hindered effective correction of misinformation.Cite error: The opening <ref> tag is malformed or has a bad name The abundance of poorly constructed questions and inaccurate answers drew criticism and encouraged trolling behavior.[6][7]

Yahoo! Answers lacked robust tools to distinguish accurate from inaccurate responses.Cite error: The opening <ref> tag is malformed or has a bad name Although community voting for best answers was initially available, this feature was discontinued in March 2014.[8] For most of its lifespan, once a best answer was chosen, no additional answers could be submitted nor could the selection be altered. While thumbs up/down indicators were displayed on answers, users were unable to cast votes. Following changes implemented after April 2014, new answers could be added even after a best answer was selected; however, changing the designated best answer remained impossible. Comments posted on best answers were seldom visible or notified to users, limiting opportunities to amend misinformation except by reposting the question.

Yamster

Yahoo! Answers' official mascot was a cartoon hamster called Yamster, a blend of the words "Yahoo" and "hamster". This character also functioned as an avatar representing the Yahoo! Answers team members.

In the beta phase of 2005, the Product Management Director used a battery-powered dancing plush hamster dressed in a karate outfit to call employees together. Initially, a photograph of this toy served as the staff's avatar; however, due to trademark issues, it was replaced first by Yahoo! Answers' green smiley face and subsequently by the animated Yamster wearing karate gear. By November 2009, the Yahoo! Answers Team Vietnam blog had chronicled Yamster's background, including images of the original plush toy.

Special guests

Yahoo! Answers featured participation from various celebrities and public figures who carried an "official" badge. During the 2008 U.S. presidential election, candidates such as Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Barack Obama, and Mitt Romney posted questions on the platform. UNICEF ambassadors took part in the "UNICEF Up Close 2007" initiative by submitting inquiries.

At the launch event for Yahoo! Answers India, then-President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam posed a question. Other distinguished contributors included global dignitaries like Queen Rania of Jordan and Shashi Tharoor, a candidate for UN Secretary-General; Nobel Prize winners Al Gore and Muhammad Yunus; activists including Bono and Jean-Michel Cousteau; alongside intellectuals such as Stephen Hawking and Marilyn vos Savant.

Site statistics

In December 2006, Yahoo! referenced comScore data to proclaim Yahoo! Answers as "the leading Q&A site on the web." By February 2018, it was recognized as the second most frequented Q&A platform worldwide, while Answers.com later adopted the tagline "The world's leading Q&A site."

In 2009, Yahoo! Answers reported having 200 million users globally with 15 million daily visitors. According to Google Trends, approximately four million unique users visited daily worldwide. Quantcast data revealed that in January 2010 there were 24 million monthly active users in the United States, which decreased by 77% to 5.6 million by November 2015.

Quantcast traffic statistics for Yahoo! Answers:

  • January 2010: 24.2 million unique US users/month; 62.2 million US visits/month
  • January 1–30, 2015: 11.3 million unique US users/month
  • October 31–November 29, 2015: 5.6 million unique US users/month
  • December 1–30, 2015: 4.5 million unique US users/month

Google Ad Planner (December 2009) reported:

  • 26 million unique visitors in the US
  • 110 million total visits from the US

Compete Site Analytics (December 2009) indicated:

  • 33.1 million unique US visitors
  • 64.9 million visits from US users

During this timeframe, Yahoo! Answers contributed roughly between 1.03% and 1.7% of overall Yahoo! traffic.

In popular media

The comedy and advice podcast My Brother, My Brother and Me included a recurring segment where co-host Griffin McElroy selected amusing or bizarre questions from Yahoo! Answers submitted by listeners. The hosts would then discuss and humorously respond to these queries. Shortly before Yahoo! Answers was discontinued, The McElroys held a commemorative episode titled "Funeral for a Friend."

Internet troll Ken M became well-known on Yahoo! Answers for posting comments that baffled other participants. His antics inspired dedicated communities on Reddit and Facebook. In recognition of his online influence, Ken was named among Time magazine’s most impactful internet personalities in 2016.

See also

Further reading

External links

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named badges02
  2. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named ac01
  3. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named ac02
  4. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named ac03
  5. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named UMich
  6. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named J. R. Raphael
  7. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Ahmed
  8. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named ICtA
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