Q&A Startups and The Value of Governance
TechCrunch covers another online question & answer startup, Tinbag, which follows in the footsteps of many others that have failed to tackle this market, including Google.
In my experience, the best community for getting anything answered online is Ask Metafilter. Since it started around 1999, it has grown organically but not explosively, and now has several hundred new questions a day. It’s loaded with interesting questions and intelligent, thoughtful responses. The membership skews toward, smart, hip, tech-savvy people. This is the place where Adam Savage of Mythbusters asks fans for show ideas. But the questions cover all areas. Unlike recent Q&A startups, AskMeFi doesn’t charge you per post, and you can’t make any money by answering questions. Membership is $5, and like buying a gun, requires a one-week waiting period. The fee alone prevents a lot of spam and abuse, but it’s also due to the high degree of trust as well as community input through the MetaTalk forum.
AskMeFi is a great example of the value of governance that Fred Wilson talks about as being next on the value stack for technology businesses. Any startup could take this site and clone it, but it wouldn’t be the same. It’s the community and the governance, not the technology, that account for its success.
