The Windows Live QnA Team has now posted some more information on Windows Live QnA at their new team blog which, it’s great to finally see some news from the actual team instead of leaving us more or less in the dark! 😉

A little background…
Once upon a time, there was an intern at Microsoft who had an idea for getting people answers to the questions they needed. He nicknamed it the hyperengine and everyone in Web Search used it for internal projects; it was way cool. Then, when he went back to college, the internal discussions started. Shouldn’t we be building a real one?

Grassroots momentum continued and eventually Windows Live QnA was born. We hired the intern back (yes,he graduated) and got another college hire to be core developers of this new idea  — creating a question-answer engine driven by the people.

Why do it?
Windows Live QnA gives us an opportunity to showcase unique knowledge provided, filtered, rated and approved by human beings not available anywhere else.  QnA allows people to ask questions of their knowledgeable friends, family, classmates at school, professional and community peers in a way that others around the world can benefit from the answers.  We want to build the biggest, friendliest and most helpful community of smart humans the world has ever seen.  Some people will love the fame and recognition that answering questions will bring them; others will appreciate getting answers quickly and easily.

Topics will range from business, health, arts, sports, technology and more.

• Does ivy kill trees?
• What’s a good, inexpensive moving company in Seattle?
• Any great ideas on getting motivated to exercise?
• What’s the best chocolate chip cookie recipe?
• Can I hook up an Xbox to a PC monitor instead of a TV?

Key features include:

• In a one-to-many system, consumers may pose questions to the Windows Live QnA community, thereby creating a store of human knowledge containing facts, opinions and experiences on topics ranging from business, health, arts, sports, technology and more.
• People then can rate answers and reputation-based scoring is available so you and others know which sources are most reputable.
• Questions are tagged so others can easily find similar or related questions and answers to learn from
• The ability to mark and remove inappropriate content

Ultimately, QnA will be deeply integrated with Windows Live Search, providing a rich, integrated searching service enabling you to search and find answers on the Web, or from experts on a given topic as part of a vertical search experience.

Windows Live QnA beta is the latest example of our efforts to continue to redefine search to make it faster and more relevant for our consumers with live connections to information they want. We want to put the consumer in control of their search experience, customize it for their context, present search results in a usable format, and empower users to make their own choices.

Via: Windows Live QnA Team Blog | MSN Search’s WebLog