Yahoo!7 Answers Blog Australia

To ensure that you get the most out of Answers, we would like to remind you to set a correct email address on your profile. This way, not only will you receive notifications on your questions and answers, but you will also be able to receive emails from other users as well as updates. From time to time, we will send you communications regarding your usage of Yahoo!7 Answers and community feedback regarding your participation.

How do I update my email?
Go to your profile page on Answers and click on Edit My Info. Make sure you have entered the right email and you’ll have nothing to worry about.

The Email Communications from Yahoo!7 Answers tab allows you to choose which notifications you want to receive.

And remember: we will never display your email or use it for any purpose than to send you notifications regarding your questions and Answers. If you choose to allow other users to contact you, your e-mail will not be visible and you can opt in and out of this option whenever you want by going to your profile

Have more questions? Leave us a comment and let us know!

Know someone who shares your interests? Fascinated by a relationship guru or a physics expert? Let your favourite users become part of your very own personal network on Answers.

How does it work?
Adding people to the Answers Contacts Network is literally a few clicks away! It can be as simple as following the “Add to My Contacts” link on any profile page or Avatar rollover. You can also invite friends from outside of Answers to join your network. Your friends can even be Contacts from your Yahoo!7 Address Book. Visit our “Invite a Friend” page to start sending out invitations to your friends. By adding people to your network, you will have direct access to their Q&A. Their most recent content will appear on the Answers homepage and on your profile page. You will also be able to see which questions your friends have starred. If you want to look at more Q&A, click on “My Network’s Q&A”, which is located at the top of your profile page.

Users who have added you to their network are called “Fans.” You can view your fans by clicking on the “Fans” tab on your profile page. When you add someone as a “Contact,” you will appear in their “Fans” tab as well.

What if I don’t want fans?
Easy! You can always opt out of the contact network.

• Go to your profile and click on “Edit my Info.”
• Uncheck the box that says “Allow other people to be my Fan” under the “Yahoo!7 Answers Network” preferences.

What about you? Do you already have a contact network? Any interesting stories with your friends on Answers? Leave us a comment and share your story!

There has been a lot of interest and activity around our move to Yahoo!7 profiles.  A benefit of using one profile for your Yahoo!7 experience means you can now share your Answers activity with those you are connected to via your Yahoo!7 profile, even if they aren’t Answers users.

Sharing your updates will help you get better responses to your questions and will let show off your knowledge to your entire social network!

We have added two new ‘Updates’ features to Answers:

• one notifies your contacts each time you ask a question
• one notifies your contacts of each question you answer

Now, when you are at the “Preview your question” stage of asking a question you will be prompted to ‘Manage your updates’. Here you choose if you want to share your updates to your social connections.

By default updates will be set to ‘Don’t share my updates’ to keep your content private unless you choose otherwise.

To give you control over what and when you share, this option can be changed anytime you ask or answer a question.  You have full control over this setting from the ‘Edit my profile’ page too.

By not sharing your updates whatever you do on Answers will not appear on your Yahoo!7 profile.

When you ask or answer we offer a link to your profile to show you exactly who you are currently sharing your updates with.  Click the ‘Manage who sees your updates’ link to be taken to profiles which is the place where you can control who see all of your Yahoo!7 Updates.

Had enough of seeing this message?  Check the box and we promise it won’t bug you again.We’ve tried to make controlling your updates as simple as possible but, if you want more information about managing your Answers updates you can find it through these Help pages: http://help.yahoo.com/l/au/yahoo7/answers/updates/

If you are still unsure about how your profile works or how to change features on your Yahoo! profile, check out our sister-blog – www.yprofileblog.com – and this specific article that is addressed to Answers users.

We hope you like this new feature, we do!

Happy updating!
Yahoo!7 Answers Team

We had our pub trivia evening last night and it was a great event enjoyed by all. We indulged in the tasty delights of the Rag & Famish kitchen (and a few refreshing bevies) before getting stuck into the real fun of the night – trivia.

We felt compelled to obey the instructions on our limited edition beer coasters and put away our iPhones & blackberries for the evening, focusing only on our intellect for the Answers.

We got off to a good start – we knew the name of Martin Crane’s dog in Frasier and we worked out that a picture of a woman with a lion tattoo on the back of her neck was Mena Suvari from American Beauty. We totally rocked the questions about 90s fads, such as what was the Japanese toy that looked like an egg? and what was the furry toy that you train to do things such as speak English?

However there were a few topics that we were particularly lacking in expertise. Did you know that Russell Crowe’s character in Gladiators was called Maximus Decimus Meridius? We didn’t! We also didn’t know that the Volga River is the longest in Europe (who said the Danube??!) and we didn’t know that the city in the famous expression ‘See this city and then die’ was referring to Naples.

Despite these mistakes, we came a respectable fourth. We had a great time distributing our coasters and meeting the community members. Everyone who attended received some of our limited edition coasters and a lovely Yahoo! hat.

We got some great feedback but for those of you who couldn’t make it, what would you have liked to ask us or tell us to help make your Answers experience better? We’ll send some Yahoo!7 Answers coasters to the best 3 suggestions!

Caitlin
Community Manager

As you’re a Yahoo!7 Answers regular, you’re probably one of those people who love learning new things and testing your random knowledge. So if you’re anything like us, you love a good old pub trivia night. What could be better? Jugs of beers, companionship and some curly questions like who was the first man on Mount Everest’s peak? and who came up with the arrangement of numbers and symbols on a computer keyboard?

So if you’re in Sydney, we’re inviting you to come and play pub trivia with us, the Yahoo!7 Answers team. We will be at the Rag & Famish hotel in North Sydney next Tuesday night 24th March to see if we’ve learnt anything from years of working at Answers.

As an additional bonus, we’ll be giving away our limited edition Yahoo!7 Answers beer coasters as well.

So come and join our team or bring some mates and compete against us. Imagine the kudos of beating the Answers team!  We’ll be in purple Yahoo! caps, not unlike these ones our avatars are wearing!

Details: 7:30pm Tuesday 24th March 2009
Rag & Famish Hotel
199 Miller Street
North Sydney NSW 2060

Hope to see you there!

Caitlin & Alana

We all know that over the years, Yahoo!7 Answers has helped many people out there. From relationship advice to gardening tips to questioning scientific truths, millions of users have found the knowledge they were looking for.

In this award winning short story, The Life of Brian (or Lack Thereof), the central character’s fascination with Answers is only partly about helping other people with his intelligent and unique answers. He also uses the site as an outlet for his competitive nature, pitting himself against overseas devotees with (in his opinion) less superior brain matter.

The 18-year-old short story writer, Brisbanite Maree Spratt, used her brother as the inspiration behind her entry into the State Library of Queensland Young Writers competition. It was her sensitive portrayal of Brian and her pithy writing style that earnt her first prize.

According to Maree, Answers was an ideal choice as an internet preoccupation for many reasons:

I wanted my character to spend a lot of time on the internet … however I didn’t want him to trawl through social networking sites or chat rooms, because they can be quite anarchic and are too people-focused. Someone as hard working and productive as Brian would see them as pointless. Yahoo! Answers seemed like the perfect virtual hang out for my character because it’s all about giving and receiving knowledge, which is one of his preoccupations. I also knew that the points system would appeal to his productive, ambitious side.

When researching Answers, Maree took a look around the site and was impressed with the dedication of the Answerers. She said one particular question stood out:

‘I’m going out in three hours and want to do something different with my hair. Any suggestions?’

Maree noted:

She even listed the different brands of curling irons and hair products that she owned. People actually answered back. Since I can’t muster enough energy to care about my own hair, I thought it was amazingly altruistic of them to get involved in the hair dilemma of an online stranger.

If you’d like to read Maree’s award winning short story, click here for the pdf version. Congratulations Maree!

Caitlin
Community Manager

We all know how ideal Yahoo!7 Answers is for answering those curly questions. From trivia to travel, it’s a great place to go to an objective answer from all sorts of people who have a variety of experiences and knowledge.

Which is why it was nice to see Yahoo!7 Answers being featured in an article in this month’s Australian marie claire magazine. Answers was used as a resource for solving a relationship problem that was concocted by one of their journalists.

The general premise was a girl was deciding whether to stick with her boring but stable long term relationship or to get out while she could to pursue pastures green. To make her decision, she visited a psychotherapist, a holistic counsellor, a tarot card reader and she posted the question on Yahoo!7 Answers.

Her experience on Answers was a positive one; she even said she got involved in responding to a few other questions in the relationships section. Her opinion of Answers echoes mine – the advice given is genuine because unlike friends and family, they don’t have to sugar coat their response to ensure you still like them at the end of the conversation.

The questions are varied and cover a variety of different life experiences. From teenage crushes to wayward husbands to text message etiquette to best friend dilemmas, there’s barely a human relationship that hasn’t been debated and analysed on Yahoo!7 Answers. Talk about paradise for all those wannabe relationship counsellors out there!

Caitlin
Community Manager

You may remember a few months ago, we announced that we had changed the default setting of Yahoo!7 Answers to display just ‘Australian questions only’. While this didn’t affect the number of people from seeing your question, only decreasing the number of questions you saw from international users, there was an overwhelming response from those who commented on the blog.

You said you enjoyed seeing more questions in some of the smaller populated categories. We read your comments and after much deliberation we made the decision to change Australian Answers back to default ‘All English Questions’, just like it was before.

This doesn’t mean you can’t change back to seeing only Australian content. If you liked seeing just the Australian questions (and many of you did) you simply have to go to the drop down box on the bottom left below the menu, click on it and select ‘Australian questions only’ instead of ‘All English questions’. This will display all questions that were posted on the Yahoo!7 Answers site as opposed to other international sites. You can even go back and forth between the two, depending on what category you’re in . The choice is yours.

Thanks for providing us with your valuable feedback.

Caitlin
Community Manager