• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, August 2, 2007

If a consumer needs to know the number of years cloth seats last in a car driven by a family of four, he'll likely find the answer on Askville, a question-and-answer site from Amazon.com that recently began targeting consumers through promotional e-mails to raise awareness.

Askville launched in December shortly after Google Answers folded, leaving a void in the niche market. Similar to Ask MetaFilter, Yahoo Answers, Microsoft QnA and LinkedIn, Askville is rarely mentioned. Could companies be missing an innovative Internet marketing tool to poll public opinion?

Rather than pay thousands of dollars to hold focus groups that solicit opinions, consumer divisions at General Electric, General Motors, OnStar and Procter and Gamble could tap into Internet communities for feedback. "No companies have done this, but it is certainly possible," says Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener.

Members of the online community answer each other's questions. They range from the esoteric--"Why do you believe in God?"--to the semi-practical--"What do you do for your dog's birthday?" to the practical--"How can you tell if your cold is a virus or an infection?" Answers remain hidden, not viewable, until questions are "closed," so prior responses don't influence future comments.

Sponsored search links appear under answers to posted questions. Jeffrey Lindsay, senior analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, says: "It's clear they are linking online retail and e-commerce activity to social network and to Web services like Mechanical Turk. The problem is, these types of sites have a large social element, so they're very difficult to advertise on."

Mechanical Turk, a Web service that pays people in the network to do tasks, answers the questions if no other users respond. Participation points--asking or answering questions and voting--translate into a virtual currency called Quest Coins. Eventually, consumers will spend the coins at soon-to-launch Questville.com, where contestants will earn even more.

While most consumers tap the site for the fun of receiving general feedback, some are marketing products and services. Take Fort Worth, Texas, software engineer Timothy Fish--aka ACWebMaster--who asks: "What are the most unusual methods of creating a web site that you have seen?" On Fish's Askville profile page he promotes his recent book Searching For Mom, and then links to a personal Web site that describes another book--not his--Church Website Design: A Step By Step Approach.

Amazon recently began sending e-mail messages to promote the service, which could indicate that the debut of Questville.com grows near.