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I’ve been thinking of the difference (and similarities) between Y! Answers and Wikipedia, and then about Yahoo!’s true strength. Excerpts from an email I wrote a friend:

… if you can get inputs from not only patients, but medical practitioners, medical students, this could be huge. There are innumerable startups out there trying to build up a comprehensive directory of medical knowledge - the Answers model could complement a static medical database by being a naturally up-to-date, action-oriented database.

I am beginning to see Answers as a product that, if properly monetized, can be larger than Wikipedia, (an alive, multicolored, thriving Wikipedia) in that it can include topics that can never be adequately addressed on W.

Wikipedia is just that - an encyclopedia of facts. Answers is that as well as experiential.

I also see a grand intersection between this and a social network. In fact, Answers is one dimension on a massive online community… an ongoing series by Rajesh Jain on how Facebook is being construed by its founders to be a social Operating System, whereby services are being built on top of Facebook APIs. Perhaps Answers can build on top of this.

… Facebook would be a great acquisition for Yahoo! Y!’s advantage over Google (or MS or AOL or similar) is that it has always been community-based - right from the time Yang and Filo built their directory based on recommendations from their friend network, to more recent initiatives like My Yahoo!. What better than what has become the social network in the US?

One a broader level, the train of thought in last paragraph above is probably more in tune with Yahoo!’s true strength - its community. It has built an interactive community while Google hasn’t (the latter has legions of users, but little by way of a community). That’s why Flickr and del.icio.us have been Yahoo!’s most successful acquisitions, and which is also why Facebook and SixApart (Movable Type, LiveJournal) would make equally great buys for the big Y!.