Yahoo! Answers launches Answers Network (Beta)

How many readers spend time browsing through Yahoo! Answers on a regular basis? Anyone? Although I admit that saw potential in the service early on during its initial release, the lackluster results and spam have gotten to the point where visiting the site is a headache in itself. The Answers team is well aware of the blatant spam and useless content riddling the service and aims to improve the user experience of existing & future members.

Rather than developing tools to stomp out content – which may carry little to no value – Yahoo! Answers will instead roll-out what they are calling the Answers Network (currently beta).

The idea behind the new "network" functionality is that registered members can customize what content they see rather than being force fed “crud” from random members. Seems sound right? Create a Yahoo! Answers experience that users can customize on a per user basis.. Sound like a winner. Although, they really haven’t solved the issue of weeding out the crud from the site.

I guess baby steps are in order right?