Growth in wiki responses
2008-06-04 13:50
New York - Somewhere between Google
Inc and the community-generated Wikipedia, reference website
Answers.com aims to build a new growth model.
The site has found its millions of users are keen to get
community-written bits of knowledge, known as wikis, alongside
its trusted encyclopaedia entries.
To spur growth, top Answers Corp executives told Reuters on
Tuesday they plan to connect more closely between such results
on Answers.com and 1-½-year-old sibling site WikiAnswers.com.
Both sites pull up answers based on a question posed by a
user, compared with searches for individual keywords used on
sites like industry leader Google.
"People are going back to the answers format. They started
that way, now they're going back to it," said Robert Formentin,
vice president of advertising sales at Answers Corp.
Some search players, including IAC/InterActiveCorp's
Ask.com, are also paying attention to consumers interested in
getting specific questions answered rather than trawling
through web links to find the results they sought.
Chief Executive Bob Rosenschein said the company would
foster more "cross-pollination" between Answers.com and
WikiAnswers.com, including a shared search bar.
Daily page views on WikiAnswers have grown to over two
million as of March, from about 250 000 when it began to
operate in early 2007.
The site has also grown to 10.3 million unique monthly
visitors as of April and is expected to reach 11 million in
early June.
"I've never been involved in a property that grows this
fast," Rosenschein said.
Answers Corp made headlines in recent months with plans to
buy Dictionary.com parent Lexico, for $100m in cash. But
the deal fizzled in March after Answers scrapped a stock
offering needed to fund it.
Two weeks ago, IAC's Ask.com sealed a deal to buy Lexico,
saying it would help expand its audience by 11%.
Rosenschein said he didn't regret the turn of events.
"I hope it's for the best," he said on Tuesday. "Had we known WikiAnswers would grow the way it did, I'm not sure we'd have done it in the first place."
WikiAnswers lets users improve the responses they received
to a particular question, relying on a community of expert
users to suggest answers for everything from how to grow a
greener lawn to what is the best relief for a migraine,
The company estimates nearly 50% of its WikiAnswers
users are in the 25 to 44 age range, with another 21%
from the 18- to 24-year-old demographic.
Formentin said the company is signing on new advertisers
for the WikiAnswers site and hopes to woo more marketers with
the idea that they are giving people information at the moment
they have asked for it.
Answers Corp has said it expects revenue of $13m to
$14m this year, up from $11.4m in 2007.