Yahoo Answers, launched on Dec. 7, 2005, has recently added new features such as an Ajax widget, more integration with other Yahoo services, Yahoo Answers Badges, and more RSS functionality. The Yahoo Search Blog announced that these features and reminded us of what Yahoo Answer is all about; “Answers is a question and answer exchange that enables people to tap into the collective wisdom of a world of web users.”
The added Ajax functionality is basically a method of typing your question and dynamically getting similar questions below the search box, as you type. This helps the user find the answer to his or her question by completing the question, asking the question better and making it more fun to use.
Yahoo Answers has also integrated the technology beyond Yahoo product reviews. They added Yahoo Mail Answers, 360 Answers and Messenger Answers.
To encourage the smart people to answer the hard questions, Yahoo has given the gatekeepers to the answers badges that show off the users most recently answered questions.
Finally, Yahoo added greater levels of RSS categorization to Yahoo Answers. You can have an RSS feed for a category, RSS feed for specific user’s answers or questions and the ability to set up an RSS feed for a keyword phrase. So if you have a problem with your Apple PowerBook’s power adapter and want to track if other people have recent issues with it, you can subscribe to a search on that topic. An other form of integration added, I found while reading Loren Baker’s coverage, which explains that Yahoo added answers to Yahoo Local. For example, try a search on San Francisco, CA 94103 and scroll down a bit to “People are asking about…” and you will see the Yahoo Answers embedded in the results.