One of the most popular community Q&A website of this decade, Yahoo Answers, is finally making its way mobile debut with today’s official release of ‘Yahoo Answers Now.’ The app had previously been spotted when it was invite-only but is now available for download for both iOS as well as Android users. It has, however, only been launched for users in the United States with no comment on global availability.
Launched as Yahoo Answers Now, the native mobile app for the widely popular Q&A platform provides users with a more practical solution for asking and answering any number of question on the go. While the platform is accessible on a mobile browser as well but the mobile app certainly feels more natural and intuitive.
In the official blog post, Tim Su, Director of Engineering at Yahoo, says that the primary goal of releasing a native mobile experience is:
The app helps users pose questions and receive quality answers quickly from members who have relevant experiences and expertise.
The suffering tech behemoth (being acquired by Verizon for $4.8 billion) is slowly and steadily acknowledging the mobile revolution. Thus, it is banking on its massive community of 300 million monthly users who visit the Q&A platform to seek advice to their life problems or to help others with theirs. The Yahoo Answers Now bring with it a variety of features that top off the already familiar experience of the service available on the web.
When you open the application, you’re first greeted with the ‘Discover’ section which provides you with the trending questions and answers on the platform. The app is fairly basic and you have three other menu option, namely Answer, Notification, and your profile. Also, you can search for specific questions and pull out the hamburger menu to gain access to the collection of categories.
Topping off the web service, Yahoo Answers Now brings with it some exclusive features that will further improve your interactions on the community platform. Firstly, if you ask a question then you’ll be directed to “qualified responders.” These individuals have been recognized to have the experiences and expertise of providing a high-quality answer.
Thus, you can also follow members who you feel are capable of answering queries and also say ‘Thank You’ using the same option or emojis similar to those available in enterprise messaging app Slack. You can now also reply using answers rich with emojis, photos, and links. The Yahoo Answers Now mobile app is also blazing fast and will provide you instant answer/question notifications.
Talking about the integrity of the service, Naroo Krishnan, Yahoo’s director of product management, says,
With Answers Now, we are re-imagining the Q&A experience for mobile users by focusing on Q&A rather than topic and discussion. Additionally, content is surfaced by relevance tailored to each user. Lastly, we use push notifications to facilitate smart matching of asker and responder for faster answers.
