Hey Davefud
I think Chris addressed this a few weeks ago with this post:
The challenges of the next10 years[
^]
There's no doubt that SO got an offering to market well before we did, but the concepts and approach used are not novel as Joel has indicated himself:
http://stackoverflow.com/about[
^]
Intermixed with a number of other initiatives we've undertaken in the last 5 years the planning of what we originally named "LiveFAQ" (which became QuickAnswers) has been underway literally, for years. Wikianswers (
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_education_or_training_do_you_need_to_become_an_oncologist)[
^] and even Yahoo Answers (
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=ArzplZOMXs0zcWD2PmtR4MXEDH1G;_ylv=3?qid=20090403012853AAUNXJP)[
^] have driven in this same general direction as well. It is just simply a logical evolution of discussion forums.
We think, and hope, that you will be very pleased with all the nifty things we're working on. QuickAnswers is some of the first fruit of the labours Chris, Thiru and the rest of the team have been pouring into the site.
David