Remember Ask.com? Back before Google became almost synonymous with internet search (sorry, Yahoo!), Ask had users enter natural language questions rather than strings of keywords. Ask is about to relaunch with an interesting new structure. First, the search engine now returns natural language answers instead of links. Second, and even more interesting, users will be able to open their query to the user community for a crowd-sourced answer.

Ask is hardly alone in making Q&A part of social search. A startup called Aardvark enables social Q&A by finding a person in the user’s network to answer a question. Aardvark may have been onto something, as it was recently acquired by Google. Other social search sites that have enabled social Q&A are Quora and Formspring. Quora considers itself a “continually improving collection” of user-generated questions and answers. Formspring is oriented toward “conversational Q&A [that] helps you express yourself”. Among the major social networks, Facebook is developing a Q&A application, which is currently in private beta. LinkedIn long has supported the ability to ask questions and hold threaded discussions within user groups, while Twitter can support Q&A but doesn’t have a specific application.

We think that Q&A is a natural extension of social search and will become a permanent part of the social media landscape. We think Q&A is particularly relevant to social shopping. The process that now begins with a shopper’s review or recommendation can just as easily begin with another shopper’s request for information. Like writing reviews, answering questions is a way for shoppers to provide value, demonstrate expertise and gain influence. Of course, we at Zavee are continuing to develop and refine our own social search capabilities, so you can look forward to exciting new features over the next several months.

The Zavee takeaway:

• Social Q&A is suddenly hot, but that doesn’t make it a fad.
• Q&A is a natural extension of the social shopping feature set.
• Look for exciting new social search features coming soon from Zavee.