Amazon Askville to take on Yahoo Answers
Amazon has officially launched Askville, its version of Yahoo's wildly successful pageview generator Yahoo Answers. On Yahoo's site, the questions get answered through the generosity of its users. Askville will bribe users with Quest Gold, redeemable for Amazon.com gift cards (for a limited time). Google Answers, which was shuttered a year ago this week, had questioners pay to get their questions answered. Time will tell if this scheme will be able to compete or if it will fail like it did the first time. That's right: This is Askville Version 2.0. It launched last year to underwhelming response. Next time, Jeff Bezos should ask if anyone wants him to do anything besides sell books.