Yahoo! Philippines Answers blog

Starting today (Thursday), you will notice a cool new Yahoo! Answers feature that will allow you to share your Answers content with your Facebook friends! This means your friends on Facebook can now help you answer your questions if you choose to share them. Your Facebook friends can also join Yahoo! Answers and connect with our amazing community to have the many questions they have answered.

What are the benefits?

One of the many advantages of social networking sites is having the ability to connect with thousands of people.   Linking your Answers account with your Facebook account increases the number of people that can answer your questions!  Some of the benefits are:

1. Make it easier for your non-Answers friends to answer your questions if you choose to share them beyond Answers.

2. If you choose to share your great answers with your Facebook friends too then they will see your answers right at the top of the list when coming to Answers from Facebook.

Control options:

On the `Preview` page you’ll see the check-boxes for where you want to share your questions and answers to.  The setting you choose here will be the default for all of your content but you have the option to change this with every posting.  This gives you full control over which info you want to share with your friends and those questions you want to ask only to the Answers community.

Things to keep in mind:

If you do decide to share your Answers activity with your friends on Facebook, keep in mind that your Answers screen name will be visible.  Your Answers activity will be associated with your Facebook identity and vice versa, which means your Facebook friends will be able to see all your Answers activity (including past activity).   If your friends on Facebook ‘like’ your question, their contacts will be able to see this activity too.

Remember, more visibility to your questions means more answers from a wider range of contacts so we hope you will find the new Facebook integration a useful addition to your Answers experience!

Once you have started sharing your Answers and Facebook accounts, “tell us what you think” on the Forum or leave your comments here, on the blog.

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Currently we offer the option to share your question or answer with your wider Yahoo! contacts through Yahoo! Updates on the `Preview your question/answer` pages.  In relation to this feature we have some good news and some bad news…

The Good News

Over the next week we’re going to be improving the visual presentation of the Updates feature and giving you easier control over what you share and where.

This is how it will look once the Yamster has finished his polishing:

With this lighter design, the change will make it easier to see whether you are currently sharing and let you update this quickly and more simply on a question-by-question or answer-by-answer basis.  You can also quickly choose whether to share with everyone or your contacts only by using the arrow to the right of the tickbox.

Don’t worry about questions showing up against your wishes – if you’ve switched sharing off in the past, it will continue to be switched off.  Otherwise you can choose your setting when you ask  or answer for the first time after we’ve launched this version of Y! updates.

The Bad News

The bad news is that to do this work we need to switch off Updates for the next few days.  This means your questions or answers won’t be shared as Updates to your Yahoo! contacts, and you will not see the Yahoo! Updates box on the Preview your Question page.

We know it’s just a small change but it is one we anticipate will simplify when and how you share your Answers knowledge… and watch this space for more developments around sharing your knowledge!

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This week Yahoo! Answers reached an important milestone – we received our 1 billionth answer!

From the small beginnings when we received our first answer from the public back in December 2005 we have now become the largest and most popular global Q&A site on the internet, available in 9 languages across 21 countries.

The volume of contributions we receive from the Answers community on a daily basis is mindboggling.  Yahoo! Answers currently receives:

823,966 questions and answers per day…
that works out to 34,331 per hour or 572 per minute
which is 10 questions and answers posted EVERY second!

The first answer on Answers

It’s difficult to pinpoint the first answer to the first question once Answers was opened to the public, but one of the first-ever answers came to this question -“Why are yawns contagious?”

This was one of many questions you’ve always wanted to know the answer to, but didn’t know how to find – until Yahoo! Answers came along.

The most answered questions of all time…

Through the years, we have had numerous celebrities and leading political figures appear on Yahoo! Answers.  Their questions have proven to be overwhelmingly popular with the community due to the large numbers of answers received.

Here’s a rundown of some of the biggest:

• The most popular question ever was from Hilary Clinton who received over 38,000 answers to her question: “Based on your own family’s experience, what do you think we should do to improve health care in America?”.
• For the Philippines, the most popular question is the one I asked about Pinoy Big Brother Double Up winner Melisa “Melai” Cantiveros, if you believe that she was the clear winner?.  It received almost 1,700 answers.
• As part of the ONE campaign to Make Poverty History, Bono took the time to select David C’s response as the best answer to his question, What can we do to make poverty history?, from the 29,458 received.
• The most popular question asked by a local celebrity was from Bianca Gonzales who got over 1,400 answers.  Her question was: “How can young Pinays be reminded that they should be confident and proud of their brown skin?”.

The quirkiest questions of all time…

The following are some of the most interesting and original questions that our Answers community has asked:

• What numbers and letters do you key on you keyboard to make a heart symbol?
• Is eating the inside of an orange peel good for you?
• How far east can you go before you’re heading west?
• What do you call the white “paper” wrapper used for White Rabbit candies?

Drum roll…

The honour of providing the 1 BILLIONTH answer on Yahoo! Answers goes to cgramer2 for his excellent response to this question: What laptop part can I replace to speed up my pc?

Thank you cgramer2 and THANK YOU Answers Community.  It is you all who have made this site such a phenomenal place where information can be exchanged and opinions heard.  Thanks to our amazing community for making this milestone happen!

So, if you ever have a question?  Yahoo! has an answer… over one billion of them!

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As a part of the changes to the Answers homepage, we’re also rolling out a few changes to the search experience on Answers over the next few days. We’ve taken the feedback you’ve provided through the blogs, email accounts, Customer Care, as well as through the feedback links and the Suggestion Board and have incorporated your comments to improve the current search experience.

Through the new search experience, you’ll notice a new, re-designed layout on your search results page, making it easier to refine your search without having to leave the page.
The new answers search page

(The new Answers search page)

1. – We’ve  taken all of the options which were previously available in Advanced Search and moved them to the left-hand-side of this page to make it easier to customize your search queries.

2. – The category dropdown has been re-structured to fit this new design.

3. – For those of you who perform the same search regularly, we’ve also thought of you: : we’ve replaced the “Make this my default search option” with the “My Saved Search” feature.  “My Saved Search” allows you to save your favorite search so you can easily access the results from anywhere on Yahoo! Answers.  By checking this box Answers will store your most frequent searches.  You can then click on the “My Saved Search” link next to the “Search Answers” button to access your saved search from wherever you are on the site.

You can find out more about making the most of `My Saved Search` by checking out this help article.

As with all of the changes we’re making at the moment we’d love to hear your feedback.  Leave us a comment here on the blog or on the feedback thread on the Suggestion board.

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Mabuhay!

How cliché to say for a first post but it’s the most appropriate thing to say in this case for two reasons. Firstly, it marks the Yahoo! Philippines Answers blog finally going live! Now you can get your regular updates about what’s new, what’s hot and what’s not in Yahoo! Philippines Answers straight from this blog. It used to be just one blog before which covered all versions of Answers in Southeast Asia, but now each country has its own blog.

Secondly, it’s to welcome me on my new job. As some of you may know already, I was recently hired to be Yahoo!’s Community Manager for the Philippines and it’s simply a thrilling experience to represent Yahoo! and be part of the team that makes sure that services like Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers and Flickr continue to empower Pinoys and help us grow a meaningful and responsible Pinoy online community.

You’ll be hearing from me constantly from this blog and occasionally, you’ll be seeing me offline as well in upcoming Yahoo! events across the country so please feel free to leave a post, email me or even chat with me should you have something in mind or just want to say hi. I’ll be here to listen to you to help make your online experience with Yahoo! a continuously enjoyable and meaningful one.

So to everyone, mabuhay!

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