Yahoo! Answers -- A Global Exchange of the World's Knowledge

In December 2005, Yahoo! launched a new community designed to harness the world's knowledge. When you have a question, Yahoo! Answers connects you to more than 400 million Yahoo! users to find you an answer. The underlying concept is simple but powerful -- what the world knows is vast, and tapping into that collective wisdom enables you to unlock the world's knowledge. Yahoo! Answers is a unique community where people share knowledge freely -- motivated by generosity, altruism and status. As they ask and answer questions, users build up a profile of their knowledge and gain reputation and status for their contribution. So what better way to get the word out about such a user-generated database of knowledge than through the users themselves?

Yahoo! designed a high profile marketing campaign and put real users at the heart of it. Online, users were challenged to help solve some of the world's most important issues, through a month of high profile questions from celebrities and leading minds, such as Dr. Stephen Hawking. And offline, the idea was to build a stage worthy of showcasing the world's knowledge: a big event in a famous location. The result was Yahoo! Answers -- Ask the Planet. Yahoo constructed the World's Biggest Brain in New York City's Times Square, a two-story structure built atop the Hard Rock Hotel marquee. Inside the gigantic purple brain, a team of top Yahoo! Answers users addressed the world's biggest questions in a Q&A marathon.

Yahoo! Answers has become the most popular Q&A site on the web, with 60 million users, 120 million answers worldwide. This success in its first year is a perfect example of how a user community can drive enormous value for users, the company, and even, the world.

Credit Information
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Client: Yahoo!
Agency: N/A
Budget: Undisclosed
Date of Campaign: June 2006
Case Study URL: http://answers.yahoo.com/