Yahoo!7 Answers Australia

Great news! You may have noticed that our Yahoo!7 Answers blog has received a little make-over. With the new functionalities you can now:

Rate posts
Now, apart from having the option to leave a comment, you can give each post a rating. Rate posts you like the best with five stars. To do so, just hover the mouse over the stars at the end of each post and choose how many stars you want to rate the post with. Also, you are now able to view the highest rated posts in real time by viewing the ‘Highest Rated’ box on the sidebar.

Share or save posts on the most popular social network/bookmarking sites
With a single click, you will be able to post updates on your favorite social networking sites. Here’s how: for Facebook, Twitter, Delicious and Yahoo Buzz, click on the relevant logo below the post. For other popular sites such as Bebo, MySpace or StumbleUpon, click on the blue ‘Share’ button below the post and select whatever network you want to share to, then post the blog. You can even email the post to a friend or save it in your bookmarks. Easy peasy!

If you are a Twitter user and want to keep up to date with the Answers blog, simply click on the ‘Follow us on Twitter‘ link on the sidebar and add us to your contacts.

Find posts through the Tag Cloud
We’ve also added a tag cloud so if you’re interested in posts about product updates, celebrities or the environment for example, you can click on the relevant tag and find all the blogs we’ve written about that particularly topic.

We think these new add-ons will make the Yahoo!7 Answers blog easier to use and more fun. What do you think?

Believe it or not, it’s already been a year since we introduced the new Yahoo!7 Answers blog to the community. As we strive to enhance your experience on Answers, we wanted to improve the ways we communicate and expand the ways we engage with you.

Remember that you can access the blog from the Related Links on the lower left-hand side of the Answers homepage, or you can bookmark it on your browser.

And don’t forget, you can follow us on our Yahoo!7 Answers Twitter account, and if you prefer using RSS to keep up to date, you only need to click subscribe and add us to your RSS reader.

We hope you’ve found the Blog to be helpful and entertaining. We’ve received a lot of comments over the last year which we always welcome. It’s a great way to learn more about what you like, what you don’t, what you think about Answers and what you think about many topics we cover. Keep them coming – we love hearing what you have to say!

We have a couple of questions for you to give us a better idea of what you want on the blog:

1) Do you remember your favourite blogpost? What was it?

2) If you could see anything on the Answers Blog -what would it be? More celebrities, more competitions, more about the product, more about other Yahoo!7 products, any new blog features you’d like to see? Use your imagination and let us know!

Caitlin
Community Manager

Are you an avid blogger? Well, then you might already know that you can incorporate Answers straight into your blog. What? You didn’t know? Well don’t worry, this blog post will tell you everything you need to know about building an Answers module on your site.

Yahoo!7 Answers Badges is one of the features that Answers and Yahoo!7 have created for you. To use it, you just need to log into your Answers profile and find a box at the bottom of the page which looks like this:

If you click the ‘badge’ link, you’ll be redirected to a page that’ll give you different options of modules and their codes to be included in your blog. You can choose whatever you like, depending on the space available within your blog, your template and what colours you want. Modules are available on JavaScript, Flash and HTML. Each of them is different and has special features:

Custom JavaScript Module
You go to the Builder to make this module. This module is great for variety. You can experiment with different colours, widths, font types, sizes and content. Say that the focus of your blog is music, with this template you can choose to display questions on that specific topic or with particular keywords to ensure that your Answers module will be in tune with your blog. Or you can also add questions to your Private Watchlist so only specific questions will display in your blog. Once you’ve tailored it to your liking, you just need to grab the javascript code provided at the end and add it to your blog. It’s easy!

Flash Module
This module updates itself in real time and shows the questions you’ve asked in Answers, making it easy for people to reply to them in a fast and comfortable manner. It provides you with another way of promoting your questions and extending them to the people who share your interests, increasing the chance of a really brilliant answer.

HTML Module
This is the simplest module we have; it’s small and you could say that it’s a direct link from your blog to Answers. You can add it wherever you want, and you can tell anyone who navigates your site to join Yahoo!7 Answers and answer your questions.

If you’re already a blogger, then it’s time for you to try out how these modules and how easy it is to create them. Remember, all you have to do is log into your profile and all the instructions you need will be waiting for you.

Let us know how it goes!

Caitlin
Community Manager