"Ten Nobel Laureates at Yahoo Answers"

"There's a problem, get on Yahoo!"

"Yahoo Answers, a no-barrier quiz community"

In the second half of May, Yahoo ads can be seen on roadside billboards throughout the Los Angeles Bay Area.

It's been almost two months since Quora was launched, and there have been some Q&A communities developed by Internet companies online, but due to the lack of fame of these Internet companies, it is difficult for the Q&A communities they do to pose a threat to Quora.

Yahoo is different, sitting on the largest entrance to the world's Internet traffic, and Yahoo's Yahoo Answers has already put a lot of pressure on Quora before it is launched.

Quora employees have been vocal about whether to open up permissions to all users, at least some.

Jimmy Wells and Larry Sanger silenced the voice: "If we open up some of the permissions now, it will offend our core users." What will users think about the users who have worked so hard to get permission to take the exam? ”

But that doesn't mean Quora won't fight back, on the eve of the launch of Yahoo Answers, Quora Encyclopedia was launched, and Quora Encyclopedia also gave users another way to unlock Quora permissions.

Yahoo's campaign is not limited to roadside commercials and TV commercials, with Yang himself participating in a TV talk show hosted by Charlie Rose. The show is a comprehensive show, and Bill Gates, Jobs, Larry Elson, and others have all appeared on this show.

"Let's welcome Jerry, who is also an old friend of ours, and I was the director of 60 minutes when Jerry was on 60 minutes not long after Yahoo was founded.

This time Jerry participated in Charlie's talk show, I believe Jerry has a lot to say, Newman has put too much pressure on him, Jerry, you can use our show to relieve the pressure.

Sometimes it's good to say what you're sad about. Charlie Ross has a sly face, ridiculing the guests of the show as an indispensable part of the talk show.

Compared with other Internet founders, Yang Zhiyuan prefers to participate in TV talk shows, including "60 Minutes", "Squawk Box", "Charlie Rose" and so on.

Yang Zhiyuan said helplessly: "Charlie, don't say that, Newman and I are friends, and their products are not in direct competition with us.

The link to the Riot Games Community's homepage is still on the Yahoo homepage. We have a certain competitive relationship, but this is a healthy competitive relationship.

The healthy competition between us and Newman can bring more and better products to Internet users. ”

Charlie Ross doesn't believe that, he knows the audience in front of the TV won't believe it, and he knows exactly what the audience wants to hear: "So you're friends, and not long after Newman launched Quora, Yahoo launched Yahoo Q&A?" ”

Regarding these questions, a list of questions will be given to the visiting guests before the show, so that they can prepare in advance.

There are very few talk shows that are truly unprepared.

So Yang Zhiyuan seemed confident: "There is no rule that whoever comes up with a certain product, and then others can't make similar products." For example, we have made portals and search engines, and Microsoft is also making portals.

Baidu and Google, in which Newman invests, are both search engines. Many people like to compare the Internet to a piece of cake, everyone is competing for this cake to eat, you eat more, I will eat less.

But judging by the Nasdaq Internet Index, it is clear that we are not competing in the cake category. I think we're all captains on the seas, leading fleets on the seas of the internet.

Newman has found a lot of good waterways, but that doesn't mean we can't go to this one.

In addition, another important reason why Yahoo is a Yahoo quiz community is that the high threshold set by Quora naturally blocks the majority of users, and we hope to provide additional options for users who do not have the opportunity to use Quora's main features. ”

Yang Zhiyuan likes to match his gestures when he speaks.

Charlie Ross nodded his head and asked, "I agree with what you said, it's like John Freeman made the world's first TV talk show face-to-face, which doesn't mean that other TV broadcasters can't do TV talk shows anymore." ”

Yang Zhiyuan: "Yes, and Yahoo Q&A will definitely be a very different product.

I don't deny that our idea is borrowed from Quora, Newman is definitely the best product manager, and Quora is the best product form in years.

Yahoo Q&A is open to everyone, and we've invited more than a dozen Nobel laureates to answer users' questions. We will invite more experts and scholars in the future.

At the same time, we also invited well-known people from all walks of life and so on.

Yahoo Q&A has also launched its own badge system, and although Quora also has a badge system, our badge system is completely different from theirs, and is used to reward excellent answerers. ”

In order to reward users who pass the exam, Quora will give the user who passes the exam a golden badge, and the icon on it means the field in which he passed the exam.

Such badges can only be owned by users who pass exams, and users can continue to take exams in other areas after passing exams in one area. For example, if he gets a badge in the field of computing, then he can also take exams in history, politics, economics, and other fields.

This kind of badge is not available to users who have registered an account with a closed beta verification code.

The badge mechanic has led some closed beta users to take the exam just to get a gold badge.

"So can I understand that Yahoo's Q&A system is topped by experts and scholars in various fields, who represent authority and are invited by Yahoo.

And then in the middle are the badge winners, and the answerers of these great questions make up the backbone of the Q&A community, and at the bottom are all the regular users who provide the source of the questions. Charlie Ross summed up for Yang Zhiyuan.

Charlie Ross is also a Quora user, and a closed beta user, and before interviewing Yang, he had thought about the pros and cons between Yahoo Q&A and Quora.

In his opinion, Quora is already a very mature product, which makes it difficult for him to make optimization suggestions from the perspective of a product manager, and he is curious to see how Yahoo Q&A can reflect its strengths.

It's hard to beat Quora by just having access to all users.

Charlie Ross asked some of their colleagues who didn't have a Quora account, and they all said that they would habitually come to Quora even if they couldn't ask questions.

Especially after Baidu is embedded in Quora, your question has actually been raised a long time ago.

Instead, it is to invite Nobel laureates and badge systems to make Charlie Rosen's eyes shine, the former is to imply that users are a knowledge question and answer community with sufficient high-quality answers, and the latter is to give rewards to ordinary users to stimulate their enthusiasm for answering.

Quora's badge system is very homogeneous and can only be earned when you pass the exam.

Of course, it is not yet known what Yahoo Q&A's badge system looks like.

Yang Zhiyuan pushed his glasses: "It can be roughly understood in this way."

Only good enough people can get into Quora, and Yahoo Q&A gives ordinary people the opportunity to participate in the quiz community. ”

Charlie Ross went on to ask, "Jerry, do you think Yahoo Q&A can beat Quora?" ”

It's a pretty acute question, especially on TV shows, where these words are recorded.

Yang Zhiyuan tried to get around this topic: "I think there are still a lot of differences between us and Quora, we just borrowed from the mechanism of Quora users asking questions and users answering.

In addition to that, Yahoo Q&A has a lot of original features. ”

Charlie Ross doesn't give face at all, and Americaken's talk show is much less friendly than China's talk show: "Isn't the core logic of the quiz community just questions and answers?

It's like if you tell me that Toyota's cars are similar to Ford's cars just in terms of driving, and they have a lot of differences in interiors.

Jerry, that's not a reason to convince me, you can't convince me, and you can't convince the audience in front of the TV. ”

Yang Zhiyuan paused for a moment and said, "I think we can beat Quora, and defeating Quora has never been Yahoo's goal."

Yahoo has always been committed to becoming a global new Internet media company, and Yahoo's goal has always been to provide better content to more users. ”

Charlie Ross grabbed the part of Yang Zhiyuan's words that he wanted to get: "Director, cut out what Jerry just said that they can beat Quora and use it as the beginning of our episode."

The next time Jerry comes back to our show, I'll show it to him. ”

Then Charlie Ross turned to Yang Zhiyuan: "You just said that you and Newman are very good friends, how did you meet?" ”

Yang Zhiyuan: "You know, we are all Chinese, and then we are both starting businesses in Silicon Valley, we will have some mutual friends, and it is easy to get to know each other.

He's a very big guy with his own ideas, and I wanted to work with him back when he started the Riot Games Community, and I said that if he was willing to sell the Riot Community to me, and if he was willing to join Yahoo, I would be willing to trade Yahoo stock. ”

Charlie Rose: "So you realized then that Newman was a rare talent? ”

Yang Zhiyuan: "Yes, Silicon Valley has always been a paradise for entrepreneurs, and I know a lot of entrepreneurs here, including myself.

Before I met Newman, the entrepreneurs I met were all out of love, thinking that there was an opportunity in a certain field, and users might need this kind of product, so we went to start a business to meet the needs of users.

Almost no one has the idea of how I want to make a profit before starting a business. Even Yahoo I didn't expect us to be profitable this year, and last year it was still in the red.

Newman is different, he thought about how to make money from this Internet model at the beginning of his business.

Taking the Riot Games community as an example, he has long thought that the Riot Games community is an auxiliary to Riot Games' distribution channels, and the game publishes profits and the game community acquires users, which is a whole set of mechanisms.

He is a rare genius, both in the product field and in the business world. ”

Charlie Rose asks, "Is Quora profitable?" ”

(End of chapter)