Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers blog

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This week Yahoo! Answers reached an important milestone – we received our 1 billionth answer!

From the small beginnings when we received our first answer from the public back in December 2005 we have now become the largest and most popular global Q&A site on the internet, available in 9 languages across 21 countries.

The volume of contributions we receive from the Answers community on a daily basis is mindboggling. Yahoo! Answers currently receives:

823,966 questions and answers per day…

that works out to 34,331 per hour or 572 per minute

which is 10 questions and answers posted EVERY second!

The first answer on Answers

It’s difficult to pinpoint the first answer to the first question once Answers was opened to the public, but one of the first-ever answers came to this question -“Why are yawns contagious?”

This was one of many questions you’ve always wanted to know the answer to, but didn’t know how to find – until Yahoo! Answers came along.

The most answered questions of all time…

Through the years, we have had numerous celebrities and leading political figures appear on Yahoo! Answers. Their questions have proven to be overwhelmingly popular with the community due to the large numbers of answers received.

Here’s a rundown of some of the biggest:

• The most popular question ever was from Hillary Clinton who received over 38,000 answers to her question: “Based on your own family’s experience, what do you think we should do to improve health care in America?”.

• This is closely followed by Oprah Winfrey’s question with over 37,000 responses

• During the 2008 US election campaign, President Barack Obama sought the wisdom of the Answers community to ask “how can we engage more people in the democratic process?”. He received nearly 18,000 answers.

• As part of the ONE campaign to Make Poverty History, Bono took the time to select David C’s response as the best answer to his question, What can we do to make poverty history?, from the 29,458 received.

The quirkiest questions of all time…

The following are some of the most interesting and original questions that our Answers community has asked:

• What numbers and letters do you key on you keyboard to make a heart symbol?

• Is eating the inside of an orange peel good for you?

• How far east can you go before you’re heading west?

Drum roll…

The honor of providing the 1 BILLIONTH answer on Yahoo! Answers goes to cgramer2 (for their excellent response to this question: What laptop part can I replace to speed up my pc?

Thank you cgramer2 and THANK YOU Answers Community. It is you all who have made this site such a phenomenal place where information can be exchanged and opinions heard. Thanks to our amazing community for making this milestone happen!

So, if you ever have a question? Yahoo! has an answer… over one billion of them!

– Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team