Web 2.0 Applications

The # 1 winner on SEOmoz's Web 2.0 Awards for Questions and Answers was Yahoo! Answers. I have been using it on and off since May 2007. While it can be interesting, there are many times that it reminds me of Web 1.0 when AOL chat rooms would be invaded by people who weren't necessary interested in the topic of the given chat room, Basketball, BookShelf, 20s, etc, and more interested in coming into the chat room SCREAMING, sending a link or causing general mischief that violated the Terms of Service (TOSsed from the chat if you didn't abide by the rules). Ah the early days.

Anyway, Yahoo!Answers functions much the same way that any other avenue of information does. The people that get the most stars and helpful votes tend to be people that take the questions at face value (without making judgement) and answer honestly and accurately. Much like in person, no one likes to feel talked down to or leave with a feeling of condescension.

The nice thing about apps like these is you could really set up some measurements of success and track how you (or your organization ) is progressing. We would like to answer 30 questions in at least 5 different categories per day with at least 33% Best Answers. Or whatever criteria you see fit. Once you have the measurement of success clearly defined, Yahoo does the rest of the work for you.

Under Collaborative Writing, one of my goals this year was to create a community list for marketing and outreach of the Herndon branch. My librarians and fellow manager have been using Google documents to build the list and contributing to it throughout the year. The next step will be to really utilize it to market specific programs and to continue to develop it over a long period of time. It has been helpful. Tracking its effectiveness could be done be evaluating program attendance to see which contacts respond to our various outreach efforts.