The cat's out of the bag

On the wires and in the news this week was the rehash of the press release that Answers.com issued on January 19^th about its reported “strong start” for ’07.

Though no real news has been reported from Answers.com on the search engine as of late, Brainboost was also being talked up this week. One mention came from Search Engine Roundtable. In the article, writer “rustybrick” tells how he received a snarky reply to his question “

how many fingers do I have?

,” but he received a decent answer from many sources when he asked, “

how many championships did michael jordan win?”

All in all, he finds the search engine to answer natural-language questions nicer than the competition. The other mention of Brainboost was on WebProNews. Barry Welford said he finds the site to be a good alternative to the now shuttered Google Answers. A letter from the folks at Answers.com let him know that the site also has community based Q&A from FAQ Farm, now called WikiAnswers. The comments from that letter were added to a post he started on Brainboost at his own blog at Cre8asite Forums. Read through the comments — there are not many — and you’ll see people are skeptically optimistic about its potential.

Looks like AnswerTips is already garnering press, even though it hasn’t officially been released to the public. Guess it’s hard to keep a lid on good things. Ben Frey and Tailfeathers and are giving their readers a preview of what the technology will look like at their blogs already. And Typepad is already showcasing AnswerTips as a widget.

(psst … this blog has AnswerTips too!)

blufr blings out some blogs

What do rap artists, athletes and bloggers all have in common? They all like to show off some bling. While the celebs might shell out for over-the-top diamond necklaces or rings, bloggers flaunt a different kind of accessory: widgets. According to a New York Times article, these embedded little gems “enhance [the blog’s] usefulness or aesthetic appeal” for the users.

In The Times article this Thursday, three examples of these small codes-of-wonder were pictured. One was blufr!

From NY Times:

A collection of widgets, from left: Blufr is a game based on trivia questions; Streampad Music Player creates a playlist to listen to; from ChipIn, a listing that provides up-to-date progress on a fund-raiser or social event.

Soon after the article appeared, recaps in places like Center Networks and Megite Tech News began to appear in other parts of the blogosphere.

Finally, New York City is seeing some seasonal weather … even Jerusalem had snow before the Big Apple. And yet, with winter weather comes the fear of winter flu. How can you mitigate your chances of catching a cold? Sue Vorenburg in the Albuquerque Tribune suggests using the dap. Akin to shaking hands, the dap requires greeters to pound fists. The idea behind it is that less skin contact means less chance of passing germs. Perhaps, but if you really want a sanitary way of saying hello, why not just follow the example of the Japanese— and bow towards one another!

Even if it isn’t really fresh news for the company, it’s still nice to see other people get excited when they stumble across something new to them. Take for instance Dan Bobinski’s article “An Ocean of Gadgets” in Management Issues. He writes about his recent discovery of 1-Click Answers, although he calls it Answers.com in his article. I tried responding to set the record straight … so far, no correction. That’s ok as long as he likes it, is using it, AND (most importantly) talking about it.

On Wednesday, the NYC office gathered for our weekly lunch together in the conference room. The topic of conversation could have any number of things: marketing, business development, SEO. But there was a more pressing issue that dominated the discussion: the season premiere of 24. With the recent return of Jack Bauer, an article from GoReporter also appeared which pointed people to Answers.com for facts on the popular show.

Last week, 1-Click Answers was named a CODiE finalist for the Best Consumer Productivity Solution. The judging now enters its final phase where the decision will lay upon SIIA members. Our competition includes:

• EverNote, EverNote Corporation

• PhotoStudio® Expressions 2.0, Individual Software, Inc.

• Quicken Home Inventory Manager, Intuit, Inc.

• Family Tree Maker 2006 Version 16, MyFamily.com, Inc.

At this point, we don’t receive anything except permission to use the graphic above. However, the statue to the left is a physical reality. In October, we won a Silver W3 Award for web creativity. The statue just arrived and is now proudly displayed in the reception area.

Add Answers.com to the Business 101 Books

Snakes on a Plane is a case study of word of mouth advertising; the Aeron Chair is a case study for status branding; and Answers.com is a case study towards profitability through Google’s AdSense, so says Rick Aristotle Munarriz in The Motley Fool:

In its original form as GuruNet, the company would charge visitors for access to its database of reference material. It was a model doomed for extinction, especially with the growing popularity of free community-driven offerings such as Wikipedia and Yahoo! Answers.

In January of 2005, Answers.com found religion. In other words, it found Google. It decided to transform itself into a free site and populate its millions of high-ranking content pages with Google AdSense ads. The makeover has been remarkable.

Quarter	Revenue Per 1,000 Queries
Q1 2005	$1.32
Q2 2005	$2.20
Q3 2005	$3.07
Q4 2005	$4.18
Q1 2006	$4.67
Q2 2006	$5.95
Q3 2006	$6.45

The article goes on to say that while Answers.com is not profitable yet, the company is on track to hit that milestone soon.

Talk about hitting ... Tigger and a tween recently had a tangle at the Orlando theme park, Disney. So what does that have to do with us? Seems Tallahassee.com brought Answers.com into the fray when they spotted some damning information on that brawling, bouncing buddy of Poo. According to “The New Adventures of Winnie The Pooh,” AnswersPage, Tigger has an alter-ego known as the "Masked Offender."

Following the president’s announcement that he will deploy more troops to Iraq, many bloggers got online to do some serious Bush bashing. Dada’s Dally believes more people would get behind the president if his decisions were made with the help of a Magic 8-Ball, rather than … well, no one knows who is really helping Bush with his decision-making, considering he brushes aside the wisdom from his advisors, senators and even panels. No matter, with the Magic 8-Ball, Bush will have 20 hard-to-disagree-with responses that he could use anytime from now to 2008. (See list of possible responses here).

I’m not quite sure how Answers.com got a mention in a blog waxing nostalgic for Nintendo’s NES system, the Apple Newton or $1 tolls to cross the Bay Bridge. Yet, Answers.com is there, on Raphael Ebron’s blog, noted as a company that has the right strategy.

The Daily Novel was also doing some reminiscing, remembering the day when journalists were professionals with accredited degrees. Nowadays, though, breaking news is happening on blogs. The tools that make that possible? Among many, the power of authoritative facts brought to you by Answers.com makes it possible.

blufr

World Tech Logic this week sung the praises of the simple yet addictive trivia game, blufr. Star New Grroup stopped short of calling it a brilliant marketing play from Answers.com.

Q&A ... Who will lead?

More and more ink is being spilled these days on the war over who will ultimately control Q&A online. This week, it was reported that Amazon is beefing up its service, Askville in an attempt to compete with the many competitors, including Answers.com, reports an AP story.

Another battle brewed online after ABC added a (sic) to a quote referring to the afterlife.

"You were one of my best friends and I'll never forget you. All my prayers go to your family and I'll see you again." (sic)

Conservative media watchdog, NewsBusters first defined ‘sic’ by calling upon Answers.com and then went on to blast the network for implying that religious belief is so erroneous that it warrant a ‘sic’ label. Bloggers helped fan the fire, until an ABC News executive later stated that the ‘sic’ referred to a misspelling of “I’ll” (ill) in the original post.

Why does winter make us crave comfort foods? Even though it’s a balmy 60 degrees in New York, a reporter in Vermont was waxing poetic about her morning bowl of oatmeal. While some may not savor a steaming bowl of oats, there are plenty of people starting their day with a bowl of cereal — which according to Answers.com is the third most popular supermarket item after carbonated beverages and bread.

Board member Ed Sims was in the news this week in one of those start-of-year articles that predicts what’s in store for 2007. This particular story from Palto Alto Daily News focused on the transformation TV Advertisers will make in order to reach their audiences in the age of TiVo. Sims credentials as an authority on this topic included being a venture capitalist, a blogger and a board member of Answers.com.

Speaking of start-of-year articles, there are also the end-of-year articles that pop up ‘round this time. Answers.com’s released its own “2006 From A to Z” topic page, which had at least one blogger, ResourceShelf, link to it.

Elsewhere in the blog-o-sphere at the start of this year, a pet enthusiast, Scatchings-and-Sniffings was sharing his 2007 New Year Resolution: to do more research on obscure breeds. Out of the gate, one of the first sites he stumbled across while doing due diligence on the Afghan breed was Answers.com, which told him the dog is one of the 14 ancient breeds.

blufr

This week, a video showed up on You Tube to disprove the validity of blufs on blufr. By Friday afternoon, the video had been seen by 2,225 on YouTube, and was found linked to an NYC comedy blog called The Apiary. The post on Apiary didn’t go unnoticed. Another blog, Mo! took the opportunity to sound off about the pros and cons of YouTube vs. stand-up when it comes to “alternative comedy.”