The Q&A Awards 2010
Welcome to our first special event:
“The Q&A Awards 2010″!
The market for Question and Answer (Q&A) web sites has grown up and we thought it was time for a good old fashion awards event. Over 30 Q&A-sites have been included in this competition, and we do believe it is the most comprehensive benchmark so far.
In order to reflect on the many types of Q&A sites out there we decided to post four different typs of questions. Here are the categories and the questions asked:
- Recreational/Social:
An everyday question that is hard to answer through a simple web search
- Professional: Software
A specific software question that you may have in your line of work
- Professional: General Business
A difficult question that should be answered by an expert
- Professional: Detailed Business
A industry specific question that can only be answered by someone in the right local business community
What is “The Q&A Awards 2010″?
Mattias Guilotte, CMO, Co-Founder Mancx.com
…And the winners are: (Drum roll please)
Recreational/social Question
Question: “Where are the best sky bars in Stockholm, Sweden?
Winner: Aardvark
Best answer:
“I’d say Och himlen därtill at the top of Skatteskrapan (86m) at Södermalm. And Gondolen located at Slussen.”
Time it took: 2 minutes.
Judgment based on: Speed and quality of answer.
The jury’s reasoning:
Aardvark won this one hands down. Two minutes after posting the question we received a great answer. Stockholm only really has two great sky bars, “Och Himlen därtill” and “Gondolen”. Both are mentioned in the first answer. Within ten minutes two more users had given similar answers. With its mobile application, Aardvark appears to be the best Q&A-service for personal questions on the go.
It took two minutes to get a great answer to this question on Aardvark!
The worst answer was provided on the Q&A-site Fluther. Someone who clearly knows Stockholm only through the hotels next to the Central Train Station wrote this: “There’s only one that I know of, at the Radisson. You might try the Absolut Icebar which is a lot more fun, or if you are looking for glamour and glitz, the Laroy where the celebrities hang out. My son lives in Sweden and he says more people visit for the culture and history than the night life.”
Well, one of the suggestions is an icebar in a cave, the second suggestion is a really depressing place at ground-level. No points for trying here!
Professional: Software Question
Question:
“What would be the best way to create a dynamic menu structure with Django? I want a menu structure with a menu and a submenu and depending on what page is currently viewed, I want to highlight items in both menus. ”
Winner: Stackoverflow
Best answer: A basic, correct answer withinin 13 minutes. Correct code snippet. Amazing.
Time it took: 13 minutes.
Judgment based on: Speed and quality of answer.
Professional: General Business Question
Question:
“What are the top ten Californian venture capital firms in the medical field? I need a good list that includes the VCs and the companies that they have invested in. I am looking for VC’s interested in investing in a Swedish company operating within the field of artificial joints.”
Winner: Quora
Best answer:
A recycled answer on the Quora web site. A similar question ha already been asked and within no time at all we received an answer with several helpful leads. See screen shot:
Screen shot from Quora’s instant response to the VC question.
Time it took: 1 second.
Judgment based on: Speed and quality of answer.
The jury’s reasoning:
Quora won this one based on speed. But we also received other helpful answers in the days after posting the question. Quora’s users are clearly plugged into the whole Silicon Valley scene. But it also has a superior system of backlogging questions. Established Q&A-sites such as ask.com and Yahooanswers came up empty handed.
Professional: Detailed Business Question
Question:
“I need information on the Belgian telecoms operator Belgacom. Need an organizational chart and the names and phone numbers and e-mails of all (or most of) the product managers.”
Winner by default: LinkedIn Answers
Answer: The names, phone numbers and e-mails of Belgacom’s product managers are not public knowledge. In order to attain this information one needs to be inside the local business community in Belgium and/or inside the telco community. Several sales people on LinkedIn offered to sell leads and research on Belgacom’s product managers. But since LinkedIn has no secure methods for these types of transactions we drew the line there. LinkedIn Answers wins by default because no one gave a satisfactory answer to this question.
Runners up: Users on many Q&A sites were very helpful in posting links to Belgacoms web site and other forums where public information on Belgacom is available. The links are thus helpful, but not satisfactory. One of the quickest responses came via Askpedia and consisted of a link to a web sited called Theofficialboard. The link is useful, yet it only supplies the names of Belgacom’s CEO and CFO:
It took around 4 hours to get this link on Askpedia.
A respondent on the web site Able2know responded by writing “Have you tried LinkedIn?”, furthermore indicating that LinkedIn is currently the best place to purchase sales leads and other types of non-public information.
Response of the Q&A site Able2know.
Conclusions
What can be learned from this first edition of “The Q&A Awards 2010″? First of all, the Q&A-market is already quite mature. General questions and technology questions are easily answered by a slew of free web sites with Aarvark as the shining star. There are also a number of both free and pay Q&A sites that offer excellent expert help. However, when it comes to questions that require specific, non-public knowledge the Q&A-market is still lacking. The social network LinkedIn supplies the best opportunity for users who are willing to pay for information that is available only to a limited number of people.
We expect the competition to be much fiercer next time
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Q&A-sites included in the competition:
Aardvark, Able2know, All Experts, Answers.com, Answerbag, The Answer bank, AOL Answers, Ask.com, Askpedia, Ask Me Helpdesk, Ask Metafilter, Askville (on Amazon.com), Blurtit, Chacha, Expertsexchange, Fixya, Fluther, Focus, Just Answers, Mahalo Answers, Quora, Rediff, Stockoverflow, Uclue, Yahooanswers.com, Webanswers.
If you have any questions regarding our research or suggestions how we can further develop this contest, please contact Henrik Dillman at Mancx & More. (atmancxcom)
