Every five or so years for the past two decades the introduction of an Internet connection to a new device type has created a boom in disruptive businesses. Most of these booms—computers, followed by mobile phones, gaming consoles and now tablets—have been clearly successful. Others (remember the Network Computer?) have been ill-timed.

Now manufacturers, and a growing ecosystem of partners to support them, are betting big that consumers are finally poised to accept an Internet connection in their most cherished living room technology mainstay, the television. Players from Samsung to Sony are bringing the so-called Connected TV (CTV) to market in mass, and you’ll see a big push this holiday season. There are already upwards of fourteen million CTVs in North America and an estimated 65 percent of TVs sold in 2012 will be CTVs.

With every platform change, both new and established companies have lined up to try and capture a share of the redistribution of rewards that inevitably comes when consumers change their habits. North American television advertising is certainly no exception as a host of companies, old and new line up to try and capture their share of that $62 billion annual advertising feast.

While there has been some preparation to date, incumbents have an incredibly hard time cannibalizing existing revenue streams for growing, but yet to mature, new revenue streams. We’ve seen this with everything from books to brokerages. And in the TV world, we are seeing it on display with the recent stutter of Hulu, the pioneering archetype, catching arrows in their back from erstwhile incumbent partners as they bravely forge ahead.

Such is the nature of distribution when the business advantage is built primarily on pricing and bundling, and carefully restricted access, not on real consumer demonstrated desires and behaviors.

Technology has always been on the side of the consumer, especially in the realm of television viewing. You may not remember now, but broadcasters bitterly fought the arrival of cable in the 70s. And while it seems absurd now, given it has created hundreds of billions of revenue, studios fought against the arrival of DVDs in the late 90s. The early titles were a handful of B movies released by Warner Brothers in conjunctions with Toshiba. It was all Toshiba could get at the time.

We may be seeing another disruption today. With a new wave of CTV content applications, the pricing and access advantage of cable television may dissipate. Imagine downloading a TNT program application directly from Turner rather than paying a cable company for access to Turner content. Content providers themselves already, or will soon, have the tools to reach their audience directly on the big screen. Turner could pocket 100% of any subscription fee and advertising revenue rather than having to share with a distribution partner.

The traditional distribution players are betting, but not banking, on the fact that new television distribution will look substantially similar to old television distribution. They are expanding their services to include on-demand viewing and hoping much will continue as before with consumers paying a fee for content bundles.

But what if that’s not the way it goes down? What if like mobile phones and the PC before them consumers choose to snack on content delivered directly to them by the content providers themselves, effectively removing the pricing, bundling and access advantage of traditional cable and satellite television distribution. In that world the power of delivery, and advertising insertion, shifts directly to content providers, device manufactures and the ecosystem of direct Internet-connected business partners they surround themselves with. In that scenario, online advertising businesses have a distinct advantage over traditional distribution businesses as they are already in the market pumping billions of video ads through existing devices like PCs, mobile phones and tablets.

Sure distribution incumbents like Comcast could make IP connected set-top boxes that consumers use to access content directly, unbundled or a la carte, but that erodes their existing revenue model around cable pricing. The industry calls folks who end run cable to get their content directly from content companies, “cord cutters.” A recent Morgan Stanley report concluded that cable companies would have to double the internet access fees of so called “cord cutters” to make up for the lost revenue on cable TV packages.

There is change brewing. Years in this business and witness to booms and busts have taught all of us to be cautious of absolutist rhetoric opining the end of any particular distribution channel. Consumers have shown a remarkable ability to expand their entertainment appetites, and new consumption habits largely prove additive, not cannibalistic (except for my poor print friends of course). So be suspect of anyone who claims that all programming or advertising is going to be wholly delivered in a particular way. But the numbers themselves are so enormous, and the opportunity so large that even a ten percent swing in consumer viewing habits from cable and satelite to Connected TV applications and cord-cutters will represent a shift in $6.2B of advertising spending. That, to me, is a scenario worth preparing for.

Sources include GFK Market Analysis, Piper Jaffray, and DeutscheBank.

By Leena Rao
Originally Posted On: Sunday, August 14th, 2011

Buddy Media, a company that provides Facebook Page and social media management tools to brands, has raised $54 million in Series D funding led by GGV Capital with Institutional Venture Partners, Bay Partners and Insight Venture Partners. This brings Buddy Media’s total funding to just under $90 million. GGV partner Jeff Richards has joined the Buddy Media Board of Directors. One of Facebook’s first ad sales execs, Kevin Colleran, has also joined the company’s board of advisors.

Buddy Media is best known for its all-in-one social media management system to help create, manage and track social campaigns on Facebook. With regard to Facebook, the platform lets brand managers agencies create, manage and track Facebook pages in a variety of languages to drive and increase user and brand engagement. Users don’t need to have any prior FBML knowledge to create pages on Facebook and can create sleek and interactive pages fairly easily.

But Facebook isn’t the only social media platform that brands need to engage; Twitter has also emerged has a powerful communications tool. And Buddy Media also offers a Twitter Management System as well. As CEO and founder Michael Lazerow tells us, it’s no longer just about Facebook, and as brands engage across a variety of channels, Buddy Media will provide them with a SaaS to manage this. He added that as Google+ scales and eventually adds a brand and company feature, the company will look to provide integration with the social platform.

Earlier this year, Buddy Media acquired social analytics tool Spinback, which develops a social commerce widget allows consumers to share products and purchases via Facebook, Twitter and email. This product is in the process of being integrated with Buddy Media’s SaaS

Of course, as more brands look to social media for engagement with consumers, Buddy Media is reaping the benefits. The company’s revenue has more than doubled since the end of 2010. Last year, Lazerow told us that Buddy Media was on track to make $20 million in sales, so revenue could be at least $40 million.

Buddy Media has added close to 200 new customers in 2011, including brands, retailers and media companies such as Ford Motor Company, Hanes, ESPN, Hearst Corporation (read more about that partnership here), and Virgin Mobile USA.

Buddy Media’s employee headcount has grown from 40 employees in 2009 to almost 200, and the company opened a London office this year as well. Recent hired include a CFO, Dennis Morgan, who led corporate finance and acquisition efforts for Yahoo.

Lazerow says the company is constantly evaluating a few things: how do brands better target content on a Facebook wall or on twitter; how do they get the right content to the right person, and how do you leverage the social graph to make all os this happen. He explains that for large brands and companies, social media monitoring is complicated by provisioning, auditing and scaling across various countries. Buddy Media makes this process simple, says Lazerow.

And Lazerow says that has the company continues to grow, this capital will help scale development, global expansion, hiring, sales, acquisitions and more. One of the challenges, he says, will be hiring the right people, but he plans to double the company’s headcount in the next year.

By Bill Clark

Most people understand that a high percentage of startups never make it. So what if you could give yourself a leg up on the competition? Below is a list of tips that may help your startup get to the next level. These ideas are not revolutionary, and many successful startups already have these qualities. Why not ensure yours does too?

1. Hire Great Coders

If you don’t have the skills to code, make sure you find someone with a solid programming background who can implement your idea. You want to make sure that person has built successful websites with features similar to your own vision. That way, you know they have the right skills for your startup. An inefficient coder will take a long time to launch the site, wasting time by making minor changes and fixing bugs. You will lose valuable time and potentially miss the opportunity to capitalize on first-to-market advantages.

2. Launch Your Product Site Quickly

Sometimes you’ll encounter a last-minute opportunity to add features to your product. However, this can delay the launch. You might consider it worth the wait, especially if the added features will further engage customers. However, make sure to launch as soon as possible with the critical functionality. You can always make later changes to improve your site and product. Furthermore, you’ll be able to start gathering valuable feedback from your customers. If you’re insecure about a hasty launch, let customers know they’re viewing the beta version of the site, and they can expect improvements soon.

3. Identify Your Users

If you’re developing a product, make sure you truly understand the needs of your end users. You might assume that potential customers are seeking your particular solution, only to discover after launch that your product might be too expensive or doesn’t precisely repair the problem. Make sure that you take some time to understand exactly what your users need, and what they are willing to pay for.

4. Don’t Target a Small Niche

Solving a problem for a targeted niche is not a bad idea — the smaller the niche, the less competition you may face. The downside is that you might not gain enough users to render a profit. Make sure to perform market research to understand the scale of consumers interested in your product. Also, plan to expand the niche once you service its need. When you evolve your original idea into adjacent markets, you will increase the probability of exponential growth.

5. Raise Enough Money the First Time

As most startups know, determining how much money to raise is difficult. Raising enough money in your seed round will carry your business through inevitable growing pains and redesigns, but it’s important to retain enough money to develop the final product your users will love. You don’t want to spend all your time convincing investors to sign that next check that will keep the company afloat. Investors would rather you spend it further developing the business and getting them a timely return on investment. You want to raise enough money initially so that you can hit a major milestone and have something to show investors.

6. Don’t Waste Money

As obvious as this one sounds, startups waste money every day. They often overspend on things that can wait until later, or on a tool that doesn’t get them the expected results. By outsourcing a variety of activities, however, startups are now becoming less expensive to launch.

One area in which startups waste money is hiring too many employees too fast. You need to make sure you can fill up the entire day of each (indispensable) employee. Early on, only hire people who add required functionality that cannot be fulfilled by current staff. You should also determine whether a person can be hired as a short-term, temporary resource (i.e. outsourcing), or whether hiring a full-time employee is the right, long-term solution. Employee salaries contribute to high overhead expenses, and should be carefully controlled at the beginning of a successful startup.

7. Have Multiple Co-Founders

A startup can be very time-consuming. Although you envisioned its concept, you may lack the required skills to launch your idea into reality. Therefore, divide the work among trusted partners with necessary skills sets, and be able to bounce ideas off each other freely.

Dave McClure states that the ideal startup has a hacker, a hustler and a designer. The hacker can code, the hustler brings in the business, and the designer architects the concept to make it appealing to a consumer or investor. You may have one or all of these skills, but often not enough time in the day to wear all of the hats. If you can’t convince a co-founder to come on board and fill a role, it may be a red flag that your idea needs tweaking.

8. All Or Nothing

We’ve all heard the saying “don’t quit your day job, kid,” but in the world of startups, any time spent focused on outside tasks is an opportunity for competitors to beat you to market. You need to focus all your time on your startup if you want it to succeed. And this may mean quitting your day job.

If you’re building a product, targeting customers, and trying to attract investors all in your spare time, you don’t have your priorities lined up. If you dedicate all your time to your startup, you will have more drive to successfully get it to market, because now your livelihood depends on it.

This list doesn’t guarantee that you will succeed, but it will give you some benchmarks to compare yourself against. Can you think of any additional characteristics that successful startups have going for them? If so, leave them in the comments.

Amazon Shuts Down California Affiliates, Following New Tax Law

By Chris Crum

On Friday, a new California state law goes into effect that will tax Internet sales through affiliate advertising. Rather than pay such taxes, online retailers like Amazon will instead shut down their affiliate programs in the state. For Amazon, that is said to come to 25,000 sites in California alone.

Democrat Governor Jerry Brown has called it a “common sense idea,” according to one report from the LA Times. Though clearly many disagree with that notion, thinking that it will do more harm that good. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has said in the past that the company is protected in the U.S. constitution’s prohibition of state’s interference in interstate commerce:

And in the U.S., the Constitution prohibits states from interfering in interstate commerce. And there was a Supreme Court case decades ago that clarified that businesses — it was mail-order at that time because the Internet did not exist — that mail-order companies could not be required to collect sales tax in states where they didn’t have what’s called “nexus.”

So there’s that, but as my colleague Josh Wolford noted in a recent related article about Texas, more and more states are saying that Amazon affiliates count as physical presences and are enacting sales tax regulations already.

That’s why Amazon has been shutting down affiliate programs. Amazon has told affiliates in the past that they’d have to move to another state to continue earning commissions on referrals. Overstock.com has reportedly done that before too.

It’s worth noting that California’s sales tax rate in general will be dropping to 7.75%. Here is the bill that was signed into law (pdf).

Some groups representing brick and mortars feel the law should be extended on a national level, claiming the taxes take away competitive advantages from Internet retailers that don’t have a physical presence in a particular state. Consumers are able to avoid fees from purchasing from these retailers that they’d otherwise have to pay by buying in-state.

Affiliates have been informed of the termination of their contracts with Amazon. They have received a letter from Amazon saying:

(The bill) specifically imposes the collection of taxes from consumers on sales by online retailers – including but not limited to those referred by California-based marketing affiliates like you – even if those retailers have no physical presence in the state.

We oppose this bill because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive. It is supported by big-box retailers, most of which are based outside California, that seek to harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors. Similar legislation in other states has led to job and income losses, and little, if any, new tax revenue. We deeply regret that we must take this action.

Danny Sullivan, a California resident wrote Bezos an open letter “thanking him” on his personal blog Daggle. It begins:

“Thank you for your letter today, informing me that after seven years of being one of your affiliates — and having earned for you about $150,000 in that time — that you “deeply regret” unilaterally terminating my contract with Amazon to be an affiliate. I also especially appreciated the part where you reassured me that this action wouldn’t affect my ability to keep buying from your company. Nice touch.”

He goes on to add that while he is fortunate enough to have a successful day job, the loss of income will have a far greater impact on many other affiliates. He also makes a good point about how Amazon will continue to get paid from existing affiliate links without the actual affiliates getting paid.

“I’m not sure how many affiliate links I have on the blog,” Sullivan writes. “Not that many, maybe 25 to 50 in all. But until about an hour ago, those links were worth something to you. Now, because of your squabble over the sales tax issue, you’ve decided to just take for free what you’d previously paid for. If I don’t find time to track down and kill those links, you keep grabbing orders that get made through them and keeping the cut I previously received”

“Over the next day or so, you’re going to get a lot of orders this way,” he adds. “Bigger affiliates will eventually move. Plenty of smaller ones won’t be bothered to change. But those small ones that don’t will add up into plenty of money for your company. You, of all companies, really understand how all that long tail stuff can mount up, right?”

Danny makes some fair points, but the fact that the law was passed is likely to drive businesses away from the state, as clearly they will have no choice if they wish to continue relying on Amazon for income.

jjlwils55, commenting on the LA Times report says, “Okay, here’s the answer…start buying products from overseas companies.  In this day of internet technology, this is a job killer and at the end of the day will not raise additional taxes.”

In the same thread, a small business owner says his company was a victim of similar circumstances all the way back in the early 80′s. “We operated out of Pennsylvania until they ‘needed $65 million’ and ‘targeted only 4 industries’ for a ‘new sales and use tax’. Lots of Exemptions only to the connected cronies in Harrisburg (lawyers of course). WE VOTED WITH OUR FEET AND MOVED TO FLORIDA. We moved the Business and Six Families after ‘growing up there’. We are still angry.”

From the sound of it, there are plenty of people getting ready to pick up and move, or at least consider it, as a result of this California law now. But how long before they are greeted with similar issues at their next destination. You can see how the ordeal has been playing out in various states in this map from TheStreet.com:

Amazon isn’t the only one the law will affect, by the way – just the biggest.

By Chip Cooper

On April 12, 2011, Senators John Kerry (D-Mass) and John McCain (R-Ariz) announced proposed legislation that could become the first federal privacy and data security law. If passed into law, The Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights will have a huge impact on how personal information is collected, used, and shared by eCommerce websites. And penalties for failure to comply could be high, very high.

The Way It Was – And Still Is

A little background information is required for perspective.

Prior to 2000, the Internet was essentially like the “wild wild west” in terms of privacy and data security. Essentially, there was no regulation. Generally speaking, except in California, privacy issues were not high on the radar screens of government regulators.

In 2000, California became the first state to have an agency dedicated to promoting and protecting the privacy rights of consumers. In 2003, California passed the California Privacy Protection Act of 2003 (OPPA), which was the first state law in the nation regulating operators of commercial websites on online services to post a privacy policy. OPPA in essence became a de facto federal statute because it applied to any person or company in the United States (and conceivably the world), and no commercial website would want to attempt to screen out California residents from participation in its services or the purchase of its products.

When OPPA became law, there was no federal privacy legislation of general application. The Bush administration essentially wanted to stay out of the way of the commercial development of the Internet.

Despite the lack of a federal statute of general application (which continues to this day), the feds did get involved with online privacy enforcement through the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Empowered by The Federal Trade Commission Act, the FTC may take legal actions to prevent unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.

Beginning in 2000, the FTC issued a report to Congress outlining four core principles of privacy protection. Since then, the FTC has taken action against companies that fail to comply with their own privacy policies or otherwise misrepresent their information management practices.

So, although the requirement for a privacy policy originated with California’s OPPA, the feds, through the FTC, are empowered to act if a website is deceptive in failing to comply with its privacy policy.

Key Provisions of the Proposed Law

If The Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights Act becomes law, this will change – in a big way. For the first time, we’ll have a federal privacy statute of general application.

So, what’s new with the proposed law? Here are some of the key points:

* Covered entities – any site that collects, uses, transfers, or stores “covered information” about more than 5,000 individuals during any consecutive 12-month period.

* “Covered Information” - personally identifiable information and any unique persistent identifier associated with an individual or networked device that may be used to identify a specific individual.

* Rights to security and accountability – included is “privacy by design” which requires the implementation of a comprehensive privacy program that incorporates privacy practices throughout the product life cycle.

* Rights to transparent notice and individual participation – notice includes clear, concise, and timely notices of privacy practices; opt–out mechanisms for (i) specific uses of covered information, and (ii) use of covered information by third parties for behavioral advertising; opt–in mechanisms for (i) use of covered information for uses other than processing a transaction, and (ii) use or transfer of previously collected covered information if there is a material change in privacy practices that would create a risk of physical harm; access to covered information; and de-identification of covered information when individual service terminates.

* Use of service providers - covered entities that use service providers are required to enter into a contract with the service provider to treat covered information as private and secure in accordance with the new statute.

* Collection of information - limited to collection of only as much information as is reasonably necessary to process a transaction or request, prevent fraud, investigate a crime or comply with a law, market using the information collected directly, conduct research and development to improve service, or for surveys of website analytics.

* Retention of covered information - retention is authorized only as long as needed to process a transaction or deliver a service, conduct research and development, or comply with the law.

* Distribution of information - transfers of any information to a third party are authorized only if covered entity performs due diligence indicating that the third party is reliable and the third party enters into a contract to use the information consistent with the new statute; combination of the information by the third party with other information is prohibited unless opt–in consent has been given.

* Enforcement - enforcement would be permitted by the FTC and state attorneys general; there would be no private of action.

* Penalties - civil penalties up to $16,500 per day for affected individuals, with a cap of $3 million for violating the security and accountability provisions, and a cap of $3 million for violating the notice and individual participation provisions.

Conclusion

If passed as proposed, The Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights will have a huge impact on covered ecommerce websites. The cost to comply will be substantial. Penalties for non-compliance are potentially devastating.

The proposed law would not only affect a website’s policies for collection, use, and sharing of personal information, but they would also affect the design of websites, the design and structure of customer and prospect databases, and how websites actually function and operate.

Source: mashable.com

Pogoplug started its life as hardware — plug a USB drive into it and access files from anywhere. Now, there’s a software version of Pogoplug, substituting your Windows, Mac or Linux machine for that hardware and letting you share pictures, music, videos and data with any of your devices or with anyone else. Let’s try it.

Downloading and installing the Pogoplug software is quick and simple. You can get the free version which lets you remotely access all the content on your computer, essentially turning your PC into your own personal cloud.

The $29 Pogoplug Premium version
lets you do all that, plus it has the ability to stream media from your computer to your iPhone, iPad or Android smartphone, all three of which have free Pogoplug apps available. Or, you can access everything from any computer with a web browser by going to your account at Pogoplug.com.

Once the Pogoplug server software is installed on your computer, it finds all your photos, music, and video, as well as data in your Desktop and Documents folder. After a few minutes, I loaded the free iPhone app and iPad app on those two devices, and suddenly I wasw streaming music, video and files with ease.

This could hardly get any easier.
Movies played smoothly even over AT&T’s 3G network, and on the iPhone and iPad, they looked slightly grainy but watchable. In addition, it was easy to share files with anyone with an email address with a few taps on a touchscreen.

There are drawbacks.
For one thing, only certain types of video files are recognized. For instance, .AVI and .MOV files play back quickly and look good, where the computer is converting them to the Pogoplug’s streaming file format. However, file formats such as the popular .MKV are not recognized as video. You can share them with whomever you like — however, they won’t stream.

Music streamed particularly well
on the iPhone and iPad, sounding just as good as it did when played directly from the PC. However, you don’t get that same iPod interface you normally do on the iPhone, but a bare subset that’s Spartan yet functional.

Uh-oh.
Perhaps the worst drawback I noticed was the instability of Pogoplug’s iPhone and iPad applications. About half the time, when I’d try to share a file or start playing video, the app would inexplicably shut down. That’s just not acceptable.

Verdict:
Pogoplug is a great idea, and the fact that you don’t need to buy a $200 hardware device to use its convenient features makes it even more attractive. However, in my testing, the associated software doesn’t feel ready yet. Its instability marred its powerful capabilities, rendering Pogoplug almost unusable.

You might want to try the free version first, and see if it’s stable on your combination of devices. Wait before you spend your $29, and hopefully in the meantime Pogoplug will fix those bugs residing in its apps for iPhone and iPad.

Pogoplug asks you to designate which folders will be available via remote access.

You can turn off remote access.

You can control everything from your PC, Mac, or Linux machine.

If you have web access, you have access to your files.

Unfortunately, the iPhone and iPad apps are pretty shaky thus far.

Hey, this is almost as good as Dropbox. Great Way to Share Files

here’s what you pay your $29 for, but it doesn’t work very well yet.

Buy the Pogoplug hardware device, and you don’t need to keep your computer running when you want to access your files remotely.

From the web, you can perform lots of file management functions, as well as share files or or publish photos to Facebook.

Here’s the splash screen of the Pogoplug iPhone app.

Look at all you can do.

Those dates don’t make it easy to find a video. One big file would have been ideal.

Question and answer websites have popped up all over the Internet. These interactive sites are designed to connect individuals and help them get answers to questions. We have compiled a list of some of the more popular Question & Answers websites below:

1. Yahoo! Answers

Yahoo! Answers is probably the largest and most respected Question & Answer site on the web. You can ask questions on any topic, or you can answer questions on any topic. There are no fees to participate. The person asking the question can indicate his choice for the best answer, and the community can rate responses as well. Points and levels are given for answering questions and receiving top ratings. Questions are categorized, making it easy to find questions and answers in your area of expertise. The Q&A database is also searchable, and you can filter the search results so that only open or resolved questions are displayed.

2. Amazon AskVille

Askville, powered by Amazon, is a community of people who ask and answer questions. Unlike other Question & Answer websites, Askville has a rich media component that allows respondents to include videos or an Amazon suggestion with their responses. Questions are categorized and searchable, making them easy to locate in the Askville database.

3. AnswerBag

AnswerBag is a traditional Question & Answer website. The AnswerBag site is free to use so you can ask and answer questions of interest.

4. Yedda/AOL Answers

Yedda/AOL Answers is a free Question & Answer community, but on a smaller scale than some others. Unlike other Q&A communities, which often restrict the length of time you can respond to questions, Yedda lets you answer questions for an endless period of time. Yedda also displays related questions and answers in addition to the question being replied to. New topics and associations between topics are created dynamically by the Yedda community.

5. Mahalo Answers

Mahalo Answers is a Question & Answer website with a twist — Mahalo uses Mahalo dollars. Those asking questions can define how much they will give for a good answer. Top answerers receive Mahalo dollars.

6. BlurtIt

BlurtIt is a standard Question & Answer website. You can ask questions, find answers, and share your knowledge with users anywhere.

7. SimplyExplained

Are you an expert in a given field? Simply Explained gives you the ability to share the knowledge and expertise you might have in any subject, from Asbestos through to Zinfandel, by answering questions relevant to your field posed by other Simply Explained users from around the globe. You can choose which questions to answer, and you will be ranked by other users according to how helpful, accurate, and simple-to-understand your answers are.

8. IMAnswers

IMAnswers is a Question & Answer site with an internet marketing focus. Posters can ask and respond to marketing related questions.

9. AskMeHelpDesk

AskMeHelpDesk is free-to-join site and contains a wide variety of questions and answers.

10. Fixya

Fixya is a community resource capable of providing relevant and up-to-date troubleshooting data. FixYa is designed for the do-it-yourself market, for individuals who want to repair and improve upon their already-purchased possessions. Individuals on Fixya can share real-world experience and connect with others to provide practical advice on a wide-range of topics from fixing cars, to cameras, to iPhones, to printers, etc. FixYa participants (FixYans) are part of a DIY revolution that helps empower techies, tinkerers, and hobbyists around the wórld.

11. FunAdvice

FunAdvice started with five categories and a simple goal: – to be the place where people could get or give advice on personal relationships. Years later, the focus has expanded to include more than twenty categories, and FunAdvice has become a place where you can ask questions, get answers, and make friend

12. Fluther

Fluther is a free Q&A collective that specializes in getting fast answers from community members. Members can ask and answer questions.

13. Uclue

Uclue is a fee-based Question & Answer service. The team of Uclue researchers will look over questions, and one of them will likely ‘lock’ it and get to work on an answer. If a researcher needs more information, or if the fee isn’t quite adequate for the amount of work involved, the researcher will post a Clarification Request, and the poster will be notified by email that their input is being sought.

14. Answerology

Answerology is a Question & Answer site that is designed to help people improve relationships, whether it be romantic partners, family, friends, or colleagues. It’s all about sharing experience and advice.

15. Unasked

The only stupid questions are the ones left unasked. Unasked is a learning community with questions and answers on a variety of topics.