Answers.com

Answers.com launched a new service yesterday called "AnswerTips". The service is available for blogs and web sites as of today. The basic idea is that you double-click a word on the page, and it brings up a diaglog from Answers with their information about that word. I have tested it a bit and it appears to be about 70% right and about 30% "off". My first reaction was, "when will we see ads all over these windows?" And I didn't have to look far. Check out the implementation on CBS News. I checked the first story that appeared on the home page.

I have two concerns with this service. First, the ads will probably become overwhelming at some point, especially on the bigger sites that don't care about the user. Second, who knows to double-click a word on a page? What will it take to train users to know to doubleclick? How many times will a user double-click a word, nothing happens and then they will never do it again? From my tests, it does load super quick which is important and seems to provide pretty decent content. Come inside for more discussion, same sites and screenshots of the service.

The answers and FAQ/help space seem to be hot over the last 6-9 months. Google tried with Google Answers but closed late last year. Yahoo Answers appears to be the big winner in the space currently but lots of other smaller players are giving it a go.

I learned about a tool called Tinbag when I read a review on TechCrunch. Mike doesn't believe the service has enough differentiation from Google Answers to succeed. The comments got pretty heated and Richard Allinson, Tinbag creator commented, I thought it might be interesting to learn more about his service. Richard has had some interesting jobs over his career and seems to be very passionate about his service. His wife does the testing, he does the coding. Come inside for the transcript of our discussion.

Today, FAQ Farm was acquired by Answers.com for $2 million in cash, which equates to a multiple of 5x revenue.