Amazon´s Nownow & Askville

Amazon has launched 2 new question-answer services available in beta versions: Nownow and Askville. These 2 services can be viewed as Web 2.0 services since both are user-centric.


NowNow's FAQ states "NowNow is a service that mobile users can use to find answers to any question via mobile email. When you post a question to NowNow via email (ask@nownow.com), our NowNow workers will surf the web to find the answer for you. NowNow workers are users who are being paid to search the web on your behalf. NowNow bypasses the need for mobile users to go to the web to find answers to questions as NowNow will send you an email with up to 3 answers to each question you ask. We have not finalized our pricing for each question, however, we expect each question will cost less than $0.25. During this beta-test period all questions asked will be FREE."
NowNow is similar to Google Answers, both are charging services and people are paid to answer a given question.

Askville is a question-answer service where one can ask any question on any topic and get real answers from real people. This service is very similar to Yahoo! Answers, both are free services that rely on users who can ask and answer each other questions (the wisdom of the crowd).