Mobile Computing News

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The Internet has come a long way since the days of Yahoo Answers and Ask.com, the most basic Q&A sites, where someone random would put up a random question, and have it answered by a random stranger. What plagued those services was the (again) random nature of it all – answers were never fully developed, and questions were rarely deep. Now, contemporary Q&A services have improved on the old model and are often deeply engaging platforms. Here’s our take on the two preeminent ones – Aardvark and Quora.

Aardvark

Aardvark, which was recently acquired by Google for $60 million, allows users to create a profile based on their interests. You can then connect with your friends via Facebook Connect, and form a network with them, so to speak, or form a network with people as you go along.

The service allows you to use Google’s Gmail chat where you can ask questions, answer questions and receive answers while never having to check the website. Which is absolutely fantastic. The system basically ‘tags’ your question and aligns it with other people’s stated interests, then targets the question to them, giving an often instant answer.

Conversations, we have found, are not deep or threaded, but pointed questions tend to get pointed answers, which is a good thing.

Quora

Unlike Aardvark, Quora appears to be more focused on getting the best possible answer for every question on the service. Answers to questions are often ranked up so that, in the long run, the community aggregates the best answer.

Like Aardvark, Quora lets you follow certain people, but it puts a greater emphasis on this. In this respect, it works a lot more like Twitter. In addition to following people, you can also follow topics and answers so that you’re a part of discussions as they develop. With Quora’s wide release having just started, it seems its community, more so than Google’s service above, will determine its true value, with its wiki-style Q&A system.

The problem with Q&A sites

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The major issue with Q&A sites has always been that people ask arbitrary, unimportant questions. For a service to build the best answer to any question, the questions asked need to be meaningful, and unfortunately questions like ‘Why is Justin Bieber so hot?’ don’t quite cut it. In this respect, Aardvark, with its focus on instantly answering any question you ask within a stream works really well because, for the most part, you will never come across any silly questions. Quora, by its architecture, is better designed for discovering fascinating conversations, but for that you have to wade through a heap of drivel. In this respect, your patience with either service will be determined by your willingness to add to the conversation, and the deliberateness with which you ask complex questions.

Verdict

At this stage, we still prefer Aardvark as its value and almost-instant gratification has been better proven to us, but Quora, as a service for more in-depth discussions, looks very promising and will reveal itself over time.

Both services have mobile phone strategies, so it won’t be long before you see Quora and Aardvark on Androids and iPhones as apps for asking questions on the run.