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Kuala Lumpur: Asking a question is
a fundamental instinct, which is also the very reason why in the
past two thousand years man has dramatically evolved his brain
function. To this day, he continuously breeds intelligence for the
betterment of his very existence by doing, what else, asking a
question.
However,
man’s insatiable thirst for understanding his world has never been
so radically intense than in the last 40 years, when technological
advancement in the dissemination of information and the craving for
extensive knowledge has become the very fuel that runs the machinery
we now call information technology.
Last week,
Yahoo! a leading innovator of online services, launched two new Web
portals for their Yahoo! Answers online community for countries
Malaysia (www.yahoo.com.my) and our very own, The Philippines (www.yahoo.com.ph).
By clicking
the Answers link, the website becomes a place where people can ask
each other questions on any topic, and at the same time get answers
by sharing knowledge in the form of facts, opinions and personal
experiences.
“Real
answers from real people,” said Bradley Horowitz, VP for advanced
development division, Yahoo!. “We have created a platform for
people to answer any questions, and as a pioneer and innovator in
this Web 2.0 space, we’re putting people at the center of what we
do,” he adds.
With the
introduction of Yahoo! Answers in the Philippines, the search engine
combines both algorithmic search (the science of mathematics behind
online searching) and community-based social search results based on
the same user query. The localized portal is designed to enhance
users’ ability to find, use, share and expand knowledge online,
enabling people to ask, answer and discover knowledge from the
Philippines, or expand to see questions and answers from the global
community—extremely useful in countries with few digitized
searchable documents on the Web.
“Yahoo!
Answers provides the most relevant place on the Web for people to
connect to local knowledge in the form of asking everyday questions,
while others participate by providing answers based on their
personal expertise,” Horowitz said. “It combines the best
properties—people and algorithms are best together rather than
algorithms alone.”
 --Jing
Garcia
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