Category Archives: What’s new

The latest and greatest updates from Answers Corp.

A WAmmy of a Year: 2011 Award Winners!

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Since 2007, Answers.com has been holding the annual WAmmy awards to honor the top questions on the site and to show our appreciation for all the contributions made by our members and 1025 Supervisors. The name WAmmy is based on the well known Grammy Awards and was inspired by the 1980’s TV game show, ‘Press Your Luck,’ that featured a mischievous cartoon character draped in a cape and known as a Whammy. From the Answer of the Year to the Funniest Question to the Lifetime Achievement Award, the 22 awards reflect the best in each category and are chosen by the community.

This year, out of a total of 14 billion answers that came from a community of 150 million users, the top response was made by Wildrosebeef. The question: Are cows happy to be killed? The quality of the reply was both thoughtful and thorough and came from someone who has plenty of experience around animals and farms. “I guess you can say that I put a bit of [my] knowledge of Life and Death into that answer to make it have character and a colorful nature. Many think that people who live on a farm are indifferent to these sort of things, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth,” reported Wildrosebeef.

There are winners based on the quality of their answers, and others who prefer to stand out behind the scenes, like ThePrismGroup who won the Most Vandals Blocked award. The zeal he shows as a Vandal Patrol member is simple: “I like everyone to have a good experience when they visit us.” Some win awards from the sheer volume of contributions they make on the site. This year, Stupid Little Genius received the Lifetime Achievement Award. In just under five years, she has made 539,145 contributions.  One can find her everywhere on the site. She is active with questions, answers, edits, organization, community, and more. Have a look at her profile page and you will see that her favorite categories are related to insects, wildlife, and sea animals, and she is most active in Math and Arithmetic. Her expertise on such a variety of topics is truly remarkable and she is most deserving of this award this year.

The WAmmys for 2012 are already underway as users nominate members throughout the year for their valuable contributions.  If you want to nominate someone for a specific WAmmy category, go to the Kontributor Kudos thread in the Community Forum, or the Supervisor Forum under WAmmy. If you have any questions about this award, contact: wammy.awards@wikianswers.com.

2012 Leap to Win AnswerThon!!

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Answers.com will host the 2012 Leap to Win AnswerThon for two days: February 25th through Feb 26th. The contest will begin at 12:00 am ET on the 25th and end at 11:59 pm ET on the 26th!

Don’t miss this leap into the new year event! Win up to $1800 in prizes! There is plenty of opportunity to win in either the 1st, 2nd or 3rd place or as a runner up.

The goal is to answer as many questions as possible in three sentences or more. Participants with the best answers, both accurate and grammatically correct, will be eligible. In order for your answers to be counted and to be eligible for prizes, you must read the rules and sign up to participate at Leap to Win on the Answers.com website.

Our newest site: Coupons by Answers.com

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The holiday season is upon us! Less than 30 days until Black Friday, the traditional start of the holiday shopping season. More than ever before, consumers are turning to the web for deal-hunting on their holiday purchases. So to help our users find the best bargains on the web, we are excited to announce the launch of Coupons by Answers.com!

What is Coupons by Answers.com? It’s an aggregation of the web’s hottest deals — coupons, free shipping offers, discounts, and much more — from popular online retailers such as Best Buy, Target, Macy’s, and Pottery Barn. But what makes this new site particularly special is that we’ll be combining all of this with the community-based Q and A for which Answers.com is known and trusted. With a slight twist: because of the short-lived nature of coupons as well as the opinion-based nature of deal-hunting, we have introduced the multiple answer format for our new Coupons site. Our consumer research has indicated this is the best way to help shoppers, and we’re excited about rolling out this new approach.

Why are we launching our Coupons site? We have found that consumers frequently have questions about the stores and products they want to buy, as well as about the coupons they find. Within our vast community, we know we have plenty of shopping experts who can answer a wide range of shopping-related questions, and we want to share their expertise with our broad audience to users to give them more confidence that they are getting the most for their money.

To celebrate the launch of Coupons, we’re giving away $100 gift cards every day for the next two weeks! Just answer the question posted on the Coupons homepage for a chance to win. And, double your chances to win by “Liking” us on Facebook! Check out all the best bargains at your favorite retailer, then let us know what you think in the comments. Happy Savings!

AnswerThon Xtreme 2011: The Answers.com Event of the Year!

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Answers.com will host the 2011 AnswerThon Xtreme for FOUR days starting next week! Don’t miss this Xtremely Xciting Event!

The goal is to answer as many questions as possible in three sentences or more.  Participants with the best answers, both accurate and grammatically correct, will qualify to win one of the many prizes. In order for your answers to be counted and to be eligible for prizes, you must read the rules and sign up to participate at answerthon.com.

 

 

 

When: Friday, September 23, 2011 through Monday, September 26, 2011*

Where: Answers.com

Who: All registered Answers.com community members: supervisors and contributors. (A previous two-time consecutive AnswerThon or AnswerHours 1st place winner must sit out for the next two consecutive AnswerThon or AnswerHours contests, thus giving other contestants an opportunity to win the 1st place slot.)

Prizes:

  • One FIRST PLACE winner: $500 Amazon.com gift card
  • Two SECOND PLACE winners (one super / one contributor):  $400 Amazon.com gift card
  • Two THIRD PLACE winners (one super / one contributor):  $250 Amazon.com gift card
  • Four FOURTH PLACE winners (two supers / two contributors) : $50 Amazon.com gift card
  • Twenty Runners Up: Answers.com souvenirs

For questions contact: answerthon@answers.com

*Event begins at 12:00 am ET on Sept 23th and ends at 12:00 pm ET on September 26th.  The UK is typically 5 hours ahead of Eastern Time. If you are unsure about the start/end times you can convert Eastern Time to your time zone.

Announcing: AnswerHours winners!

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On July 27th Answers.com held its first mini AnswerThon. In just three short hours our awesome contributors posted 1,018 answers to people’s questions.

We are proud to announce the eight top contributors:

 

First Place:

Second Place:

Third Place:

Fourth Place:

Stay tuned for future events like this one!

Introducing: AnswerHours!

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How many questions do you think you can answer in three hours? That’s right, three short hours. Try your best and you could win a prize in our newest contest, AnswerHours, coming up this week!

You’ve probably heard of our popular AnswerThon, an annual event that pits our prolific community members against each other, all in the name of answering people’s questions. AnswerHours works the same way, just in a shorter time frame. Whoever posts the most answers in three hours will be crowned the winner. This AnswerHours event is open to all registered Answers.com Community members, both volunteer Supervisors and Non-Supervisors.

Be one of the top six contributors who answer the most questions and share in prizes valued at over $1,000. In order for your answers to be counted and to be eligible for prizes, you must read the rules and sign up for the contest.

When: Wednesday, July 27, 2011 from 8 to 11 p.m. ET (Note: The UK is typically 5 hours ahead of Eastern Time. If you are unsure you can convert Eastern Time to your time zone.)

Who: All registered Answers.com community members (both supervisors and non-supervisors)

What: Answer the most questions in a three-hour time frame and you could win one of the following prizes:

  • Two FIRST PLACE winners (one volunteer supervisor and one non-supervisor contributor) will receive a $150 Amazon.com gift card
  • Two SECOND PLACE winners (one volunteer supervisor and one non-supervisor contributor) will receive a $100 Amazon.com gift card
  • Two THIRD PLACE (one volunteer supervisor and one non-supervisor contributor) will each receive a Radica 20 Questions Handheld Game ($25 value) and Answers.com merchandise
  • Two FOURTH PLACE winners (one volunteer supervisor and one non-supervisor contributor) will each receive Answers.com merchandise

Please read the rules carefully before signing up and participating. We wish everyone the best of luck!

Recommend Answers.com with Google +1

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We recently added a Google +1 button on the Answers.com homepage and WikiAnswers homepage. Very similar to Facebook’s Like button, Google +1 acts as a user vote for the quality of the page you are on.

Google will be using +1 as another signal for quality of their search results. It will also show your Google contacts that you’ve given Answers.com your personal stamp of approval.

If you are signed into to your Google/Gmail account, go ahead and click Google +1 to give us your vote of confidence. You can find the button on the left hand side of the homepage, under “Recommend us.”

Answers.com (and more!) on Facebook

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We love social media here at Answers.com. And with 33,000+ fans on our Facebook page, we’re pretty sure you do too. But did you know we have Facebook pages set up for every language and community group on Answers.com? This week we added two new ones to the list: WikiAnswers Influential Teens (WIT) and Answers.com Tagalog.

You can find our main Answers.com Facebook page here and follow our Twitter feed of titillating trivia here. Here is a full list of our Facebook pages and a sample of what you will find there. Go ahead, tell us you like us!

 

Answers.com Facebook Pages

Did your question get answered? Pay it forward!

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Our mission here at Answers.com is to provide answers to all of your questions. Pretty self-explanatory, right? But with an average of one question asked every two seconds, our small staff can’t possibly keep up. That’s where you come in. Because let’s be honest, 6.4 million heads are better than one. Chances are you’ve been the recipient of a well-written answer from one of your fellow community members. And like magic, that answer was delivered right to your inbox. Pretty cool, huh?

You know what they say, “What goes around comes around.” So why not give back to the community who gave you your answer? The best way to do that is by answering someone else’s query. In other words, pay it forward!

Next time you get an answer to a question, look for the new pay it forward link in your answer update email.

 

Clicking on it will take you to Answers.com’s most recently asked questions. Scroll through and you’ll probably find something you know the answer to.

Better hurry up though, in the time it took you to read this blog post, there have been about 25 more questions asked!

See a good answer? Click recommend!

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If you’re an active Answers.com contributor, you no doubt know about trust points. Given by fellow users, a trust point is a virtual pat on the back for a good contribution. It shows that you recommend that user for good answers and trust them to make good edits in the future.

Currently, to give a user a trust point, you can click “recommend” on any answer they’ve edited, or directly on that user’s profile page. But recently we introduced a new way to recommend a user — straight from your answer update emails. Answer update emails are generated when questions on your watchlist are edited. If you see a good contribution, go ahead and click recommend!

Contributors are then notified by email when they receive a trust point. Don’t worry though, your user name is not included in this email. Here’s what that “Hats off – you’ve been recommended!” email looks like:

Trust points are listed next to each contributor’s user name. For example: JohnDoe (5) has five trust points. A couple more tips: You can only give a user one trust point and you cannot subtract trust points. Next time you see a great answer, don’t be afraid to let your fellow contributor know you trust them!