Yahoo Answers is a Political Campaigners Dream!

I noticed today on the front page of Yahoo a link to the Answers section of the site where they have featured Democratic hopeful Barak Obama with a question for everyone to answer.

How can we engage more people in the democratic process?
I will be asking questions to help create dialogue around this and many other important topics so please add me to your Answers Network so that we can begin exchanging ideas and hopefully make changes that will benefit the future.

This question was posed 6 days ago and there are 15 days left for you to lodge your own answer. The total number of answers is nearing 3k, being at 2,954 Yahoos that have answered Obama’s question.

This is a great way for a young candidate to reach out and have his policies be heard by young votes – this is the type of campaigning that will make a huge difference in the 2008 election, one that we may see social networking strategy be a huge part of the outcome!

So, What’s your Answer?

Originally posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
Marketing, Social Media, Tagging, Yahoo, Politics.

2 Comments on Yahoo Answers is a Political Campaigners Dream!

1. Carl Strohmeyer said:
   March 27th, 2007 at 4:59 pm

   This is a terrible idea!

   Yahoo answers is not a community of real knowledge, rather a community of posers. All this tells me is that Obam is a poser.
   The answers that passs for best are often a joke or worse, dangerous.
   Since Yahoo Answers added the “top contributor” feature those who where this banner are even certain to get voted or picked “best answer”. The problems lies (And I can say this with authority as I have been in the aquarium maintenance and research business for over 28 years now) is that very poor advice is rewarded and passed along like was correct and what is worse is this advice can and will end up killing fish, and even breaking aquariums (based on one really bad answer I read). Yahoo needs to step up to the plate and stop this joke now!
   For more please read my blog about this.

2. admin said:
   March 27th, 2007 at 6:16 pm

   I do agree that there needs to be some type of filtering. Maybe something like Digg’s Bury function could be used.

   It seems to me that there is a growing issue with social media commenting being lower quality and less authoritative than people would assume.

   Thanks for the input!

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