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AUSTIN, Texas - Time Warner's AOL unit announced today its purchase of Israeli Web search service Yedda Inc., and plans to incorporate the company's patent-pending semantic technology into  AOL.com services. Yedda uses people rather than a database to answer the questions submitted by its users, allowing searchers to help one another in an environment resembling a message forum. Financial details of the purchase, which comes on the heels of AOL's purchase of contextual advertising firm Quigo, were not disclosed. Excited to Weave Unique Value into AOL Yedda was developed in Israel in February of 2005 and founded in early 2006 by Avichay Nissenbaum and Yavin Golan, and according to Nissenbaum who is now the company's CEO, joining AOL represents an exciting time for the company. "We are excited about joining the AOL family. The services and technologies our team developed are a perfect fit with the AOL strategy," said Nissenbaum. "We will continue to empower knowledge communities throughout the Web, directly and through our network of partnerships, and we're looking forward to weaving our unique value into the various AOL properties," he said. AOL will operate Yedda, which currently employs approximately 20 people, as a wholly owned subsidiary reporting to David Liu, AOL's senior vice president. Yedda will however continue operations in the U.S. and throughout Europe, with the company's research and development headquarters remaining in Israel. How Yedda Works Users of Yedda submit questions which they associate with various categories, and e-mail notifications are sent to those who have chosen to be listed as having an interest in or personal knowledge about those topics,  asking them to write an answer. If a user doesn't want to be contacted by e-mail asking for help with newly posted questions from other users, Yedda allows people to browse the site by category and answer any question they wish. Each user at Yedda also lists which types of questions they may be able to help answer. Users can choose to be notified by e-mail when a new answer to their question has been posted. Yedda explains their process as "technology [that] intelligently routes questions to relevant communities of Internet users who can 'syndicate' their expertise and spark a community-wide dialogue of people invited to discuss and learn from each other's experiences." The way Yedda works contains core components that have been around since the early days of Usenet newsgroups, well before the advent of the Web. A back and forth exchange between helpful and knowledgeable people has existed in many forms online, including everything from e-mail and message forums such as WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint to the now ubiquitous blog. Similar to Google and Yahoo Services Yedda is the most recent company to tackle Internet search questions by taking advantage of a free and publicly accessible community of users. Search leader Google for a time offered an experimental service called Google Answers which worked similarly, however it was a fee based service where questioners agreed to pay for answers, and was shut down in November, 2006. Prices for asking a question on Google's service ranged from $2 to $200 with the company reportedly keeping 25 percent of the payments. Yahoo offers the service most most closely resembling Yedda, with its free Yahoo Answers system, which encourages participation through a point based recognition system along with occasionally awarding prizes to regular users. Yedda says that its goal it to "merge the convenience and efficiency of search with the unlimited value of individual knowledge." The company also offers a partnership program for Web site owners who want their sites to become a part of what it calls "knowledge communities." Nissenbaum believes Yedda has learned from such previous efforts as Google Answers, and that his company is putting that knowledge to good use. "The Yedda team has observed and learned from past experiences of other attempts to share and exchange knowledge over the web," he said in a recent Israel-Times interview, "and has adopted best practices from existing venues, incorporated their own innovations (such as semantic tag clouds and proactive Q&A), and sprinkled with compelling Web 2.0 rich features," said Nissenbaum. Added to AOL in Coming Months AOL expects to incorporate the Yedda technology in its own offerings over the coming months, in what the company calls "select programming [and] experiences," according to today's announcement. AOL's President and Chief Operating Officer Ron Grant appears pleased to be bringing Yedda's techniques on board. "Incorporating Yedda's unique technology into AOL enables us to bring together our traditional search resources and an entire community of people to help users quickly find answers to questions," said Grant. "In the course of our daily lives we often leverage the experience and expertise of friends, colleagues and professionals like doctors and lawyers to get answers to questions we have," he said. AOL Buys Second Web Firm of Week, Yedda The Yedda Web site received nearly 800,000 unique visitors in October according to Web usage tracking firm comScore, a figure more than double the 215,000 site visitors reported in June. What effect the purchase by AOL will have on Yedda's popularity remains to be seen, however Nissenbaum has high hopes. "As a great believer in the democratization of content over the web, I hope to make Yedda the best place to share knowledge amongst people all over the world," Nissenbaum said in the Israel-Times interview. For people with a question they haven't been able to answer using traditional search engines, Yedda and its personalized human approach may be a useful solution. Related Links:
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10:10 pm on Nov. 12, 2007 (utc 0)
