The Story
Aardvark, a startup which runs a pretty awesome question and answer service, will be opening up its database of compiled question and answers to the public. According to Max Ventilla, CEO of Vark,
Next Wednesday, October 14, Aardvark is going to make Social Search available on the Web at www.vark.com.
The new website will be open to the public, so for the first time, anyone in the world will be able to tap into the wisdom of their social networks just by visitingwww.vark.com.
Aardvark is a service which allows users to ask questions and answers via instant message, email, and forms on the vark.com website. When a user signs up, he fills out topics about which he wants to answer questions. So if you go to the site and register yourself as someone who knows stuff about cooking, you’ll receive questions about cooking, among other things. When you in turn ask a question, Aardvark will direct it to a user who’s knowledgeable on the topic, who will then respond to your inquiry.
The Questions War Has Begun
As many people who punch questions into Google are aware, Yahoo Answers is a pretty good resource of information. Need help with your math homework? If the problem is simple enough, chances are that there’s an answer out there. This makes Yahoo Answers the real competition against which Aardvark’s search feature will be competing.
If I were a gambling man, I’d place my money on Aardvark. The reason for this is because Vark compiles answers far more effectively. With Yahoo Answers, users punch in a question and wait for a reply. This is all done from a web interface. By contrast, Vark works web, IM, email, and even through an iPhone application. This leads to a lot more answers to questions.
The real trump card for both Aardvark and Yahoo Answers is how Google ranks each one. Right now, the Yahoo Answers page for a whole lot of questions is at the top of Google. But when Aardvark allows the public to view answers acquired via its service, we’re going to see the page rank of the vark.com domain shoot up. That’s just a function of how much data there is on those servers. This is not to say that Aardvark will be an overnight household name, but in the course of three years or so, a whole lot of the English-speaking world is going to be hitting up vark.com for answers.
