1 Billion Answers Served!
Photo by Rasmin
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 Hillary 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?”.
- This is closely followed by Oprah Winfrey’s question with over 37,000 responses
- During the 2008 US election campaign, President Barack Obama sought the wisdom of the Answers community to ask “how can we engage more people in the democratic process?”. He received nearly 18,000 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 quirkiest questions of all time…
The following are some of the most interesting and original questions that our Answers community has asked:
Drum roll…
The honor of providing the 1 BILLIONTH answer on Yahoo! Answers goes to cgramer2 (for their 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!
—YAT
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
- Rating:
(39 votes, average: 4.00) - Permalink
- Comments (44)
Loading ...
(average 4.64)
Subscribe
Right on! Go Yahoo answers!
And if we remove all the answers generated in the P&S section, that would leave only about 1 million useful answers. That’s not very good Yahoo.
Yay, Yahoo! Answers… but I don’t think that question about how to make hearts on the keyboard is very “interesting/original”. A lot of people ask that.
Great job dude, You guys strong determination did the wonder! Congrats to all the Yahoo Answers family!
yahoo answers is the best
Great job Yahoo Answers. So, do we all get some kind of recognition award? lol
and thanks to the trolls, they posted nonsence a million times
do we get like a billion points as a treat
Too bad there’s so much junk. Nonsense questions and responses, chatter, “IDK”, spam and such really take away from an otherwise useful platform for communication and learning. Not to mention that most users don’t bother to search for an answer and that the same questions reoccur many times over, day after day, wasting the time and energy of those trying to be helpful.
But yet you still repeat the same Best of Answers in rotation for weeks at a time. That’s a bit of a commentary on how the quality isn’t necessarily in step with the quantity.
And that billion answers actually includes about, oh, maybe as many as ten thousand that AREN’T SPAM!!!
Also don’t forget this was “ANSWERS” and not questions. Sadly, I suspect about 300 a day are basically, “Visit my scam and phishing site at the following URL and give us your credit card number.”
…and how many when you subtract repeated and unanswerable quetions like:-
Am I pregnant?
Is there a god?
Does he/she love me?
Where do atheists get their morals?
Will the world end in 2012?
Isn’t it about time Y!A started filtering out this repeated garbage and became a source of real information?
AHA, so this is where that first question ended up.
Did you know rubbing the end of your nose with one finger is also contagious? just try it and see.
I don’t mind the same questions being asked over and over. It gives every new arrival a chance to shine, if then know the answer.
Anyone knows that it is a matter
of quality over quantity … If I did
not spend the time researching
my answers I could probably be
on the top of my list as well, but
that would not help the person
who asked
You pride yourself with reference
to the celebs who have had
thousands of responses to each
and every one of their questions —
but you do not mention that they
only asked those questions by
special request and not because
they frequent this website
{ if anyone ever notices that one
question is the ONLY time they
have ever been on the Answers
website and only because they
either were pushing a book or
movie or in the case of Hillary Clinton;
an election }
While you are proud to mention the
thousands of responses from just
one question posed by a celeb you
also forget to mention that these
same celebs, that felt it was sooo
important to ask the question, hardly
if ever take the time to choose an
answer – or respond in kind …. which
leaves the answers staff to have to
choose the answer in their place…
The same question posed by a true member
of the answers community might have gotten
5 to 10 responses from that question before
it got pushed to the very back of the board in
a matter of minutes — while the celeb’s question
would be posted at the very top of the site and
open for responses months at a time
**
It is so strange that not much people are aware of yahoo answer. I mean real computer users. It needs more advertisement…
I’d like to see how many of these questions and answers are actually well thought out and informative. None of these “What is my friend thinking?” “Is the world going to end in 2012?” “Who’s going to win tonight?” And my all-time favourite stupid question, “Do my homework?”
Yes and when you take away all the stupid dumb questions like….. Am I pregnant, Does he love me, How will the World end, Who will win Big Brother 10 etc etc… You are left with about a dozen useful questions…
Honestly, who cares if people post the same questions over and over or if YOU regard them as useless. Its not about what you THINK, its about people coming here for insight, whether its advice or facts. And personally i couldnt care less how many answers or questions there are. I couldnt care less what percentage of them are crap. Im just glad this site exists. Period.
Yahoo answers???
They delete all my post because I’ve received a 90% best answers, and they thought probably I was a cheater…
Strange? You answer, then get rated as best answer, but if there is too many best answer, you might get all your post deleted.
I was posting answers about movies sites & music sites using this site links http://www.wiibeez.com/movies.htm & …/music.htm ; as this site is a powerfull multiple sites search engines, I’ve got 90% best answers… untill all my post was deleted?
Isn’t the issue to give good answer to peoples at yahoo answers???
Can you be blamed to get 90% best answers rating???
Strange…
YEAH! I’m so proud to be part of something so big,
And i know that we’ll get to 2 billion twice as fast!
It’s not 1 billion answers, its 1 billion BEST answers from the looks of it.
Unless I’m looking at it wrong.
The Account Destroyer is right – there is far too much trash among both the questions and the answers
Hope someday it will be different.
its really great milestone …. heartiest congratulations to yahoo /answers ….a great yahoo hyde park …with incentives of points ../recorded chat
Wow, that’s great! I love to be a part of the community! (:
Does this count the people who have more than one account because of being kicked off previously? or for any other reason? is this one billion actual people?
yahoo answers is the best…
Great work, Then why have you broken it? It seems since this weekend closed questions with best answers are showing up under the Open questions tab.
And Account Desytroyer & Olivia Knows something are both right and it is easily fixed. Just allow it so that Level 7 members with Top Contributor rank in the catagory can vote to delete a question or answer. Require 3 votes. Sort of a 3 strikes and your out sort of thing.
Great quantity. Care to make a comment on the Quality?
I love yahoo.answers… its a great place to get answers from others that delt with similar problems! =)
I love yahoo answers it has some of the problems that i have 2 ansd it helps me out
I’m happy for you…..
lets celebrate yahoo answers….
…Yet there’s no mention of my humble self.
I’ve contributed 28,500 in this account and estimate another 15,000 in my original account that was suspended with just under 100,000 points.
Don’t I deserve a T-shirt or some such?
I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE YAHOO ANSWERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well done!
Y! Answers is really great.
Cheers
I don’t understand why one billion answers makes the site so cool.
The majority of answers and questions are trash. Like in the R and S section half the questions and answers are atheists and christians making fun of each other.
Take away all the R and S questions and you probably only have 900 million answers left, and most of them probably aren’t decent either.
Man I can’t believe you got so many answers – but Polls and Surveys really take up too many of them. Y!A needs to make the polls and surveys different (splitting it up or something) because I think 1/4 could be from P&S
Well done everyone for helping Yahoo reaching one billion questions answered.
Here’s to the next billion.
Congratulations, Y7A!!! I have gotten my car fixed, my vegan diet explained, my upcoming trip to Australia planned, have had my brain worked, have researched my answers and learned a lot. I enjoy the chance to help people in the MH section. I have made a great friend/penpal and a number of connections overseas. Thanks for all you’ve done for me!!
WHOA Whoa YAHOO GREAT JOB LETS AIM FOR 2-3 BILLION THIS AND NEXT YEAR AYAYAYAYAYAYYA !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thats very good for the yahoo answers community.Yahoo answers is the best without doubt
Yahoo Answers is just that the place for answers, the diverse facts, opinions & information has been a great experience and resource for my family and I. Thank You