As you go through life, you quickly figure out who's full of beans and whose advice is worth taking. That's the crux of a new beta feature we've just rolled out on Yahoo! Answers: the Answers Network. If you're one of the 90 million people who seek out the advice of kindly strangers at answers.yahoo.com, you've probably run into those rock stars who always seem to ask great questions and go the extra mile to provide thoughtful, thorough and helpful answers. Now you can collect all of these people and tuck them into your own personal "knowledge network," making your visits more personalized and more likely to lead to great epiphanies.

If you have a Flickr or del.icio.us account, you'll recognize this model and its benefits. Every time you log into Yahoo! Answers, you can check out your contacts' questions and answers and the topics they've starred. As a result, you might get turned on to something new or get deeper insights into something you're already fired up about. You can also invite your friends to join your network. The bigger your network, the more likely your questions will have timely, clueful answers. And you know that thrill you get when someone comments on your Flickr photo or adds you as a contact? You'll get that same rush here as fellow question-askers/answerers declare themselves as your "fan." (BTW: If all this sharing isn't your cup of tea, you can just opt out.)

We think this is a great way to mash up social search (searching for information with the help of fellow humans) and social media (sharing opinions, insights, experiences and perspectives with others) — the kind of ongoing evolution we're exploring for our social media properties. Go check it out and start building your brain.

To learn more, check out Yahoo! Answers blog, this screencast, and this great summary at Search Engine Journal.

Elizabeth Douglas
Sr. Product Manager, Yahoo! Answers