Qunu is a really neat concept. As you can see on the alpha testing site, the service allows you to search for experts on technology topics and get instant answers to your questions. Qunu runs on a web-based Jabber IM client, but you can ask for help on the site itself. As an expert, you receive questions through your desktop Jabber client. There’s no need to sign up, but if you do you can create a special “@qunu.com” Jabber ID - you can also log in with your existing Jabber account. In many ways, it’s like a chat-based version of Fixya. This is a smart idea for a number of reasons. Firstly, users are overwhelmed by the amount of content out there, and often just want a quick answer - the near exponential growth of Yahoo Answers is testament to that fact. Secondly, they’ve had the sense to focus on tech questions. This means that all the topic areas will quickly be filled by experts - they can expand to other areas once they’ve proved the core model.
But most of all - there is huge, huge potential here. While the real experts won’t answer your questions for free, they will do so for a fee - Qunu could enable a marketplace for tech help, and users would be incentivized to give good advice in the free section so they could advance to the paid questions. Bloggers could even put a Qunu question box on their site and use it as a lightweight version of Ether. Additionally, Qunu could log all these conversations (with authorization from both parties, of course), and build up a huge knowledgebase that saves everybody time. Qunu is a truly useful idea and I hope it succeeds.
from mashable.com
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