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Microsoft QnA Enters Crowded Market

More Microsoft news today: Live.com has announced the upcoming launch of QnA, and a few screen shots have been conveniently leaked as well (see end of post).

QnA is a question and answer service that looks like it will be a very close copy of Yahoo Answers. Google’s comparable service, Google Answers, relies on paid experts to generate answers. Microsoft QnA and Yahoo Answers, in contrast, allow anyone to answer questions, and the answers are ranked by other users.

Note that there are also independent services in this space, such as Wondir, Ask Metafilter, Oyugi and the yet-to-be-launched Yedda. This is a crowded space, to say the least.

Here’s what the Live.com team is saying so far:

Windows Live QnA gives us an opportunity to showcase unique knowledge – provided, filtered, rated and approved by human beings – not available anywhere else. QnA allows people to ask questions of their knowledgeable friends, family, classmates at school, professional and community peers in a way that others around the world can benefit from the answers. We want to build the biggest, friendliest and most helpful community of smart humans the world has ever seen. Some people will love the fame and recognition that answering questions will bring them; others will appreciate getting answers quickly and easily.

Microsoft is also saying that they will deeply integrating QnA content into Windows Live Search.

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