QnA moves from Live Search to MSN

In an attempt to better align products and sites focused on content and community, QnA moved from Live Search to MSN. Leader of the MSN QnA team will be Kristy:

Kristy

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Hello! I’m Kristy and I’m excited to be leading the MSN QnA team.

After years working as an Executive Producer, Manager and Community Promotions Director for a large Internet company, I joined Microsoft in the Silicon Valley to continue working in the Web Industry and remain in the Bay Area (I’m a California native). That was 5 years ago. Since then, I’ve shipped MSN Radio Applications, TV Listings and Recording Services and Media Discovery features. And, for the past 2 years, I’ve been leading teams developing community features for MSN. I see QnA as a fabulous community to be part of MSN. Community is important to me. I’m eager to explore how we can continue to evolve and improve the experience in ways that help grow a healthy, vibrant community.

I’ve learned a lot from what you, the QnA community, have posted in questions, answers and the Message Boards. I’ll always be on the lookout for good, constructive input and you may even see me ask questions about feature ideas from time to time.

According to Kristy there’s never been a better time for QnA to be part of MSN. So what does this mean to the future of QnA? For starters the site will be rebranded to a new MSN brand (hmm, what will it be this time?), and with the next release there will be changes to how QnA handles “Conversational” versus “Informational” questions. More information can be found in the announcement on the QnA Team blog.

Live QnA can be found at http://qna.live.com, surely this addy will change in the future. Most likely the Team Blog address too as they are shaking off live in the name.

Comments

  • http://gregsedwards.spaces.live.com gregsedwards

    What an odd move for QnA. I’d have expected (and preferred) that they roll the service into Windows Live instead. Hey, if they can justify keeping some of those other obscure services in there, why not QnA? I know that the MSN brand is supposed to be more focused on published news and information, but QnA is community generated content. That makes it a better fit for Windows Live.

    Ideally, I’d like to see all of Microsoft’s online efforts unified under the Live banner. Maybe even drop the “Windows,” since none of the services have much to do with the Windows OS, except maybe the download-able Essentials.

    This move just adds to the confusion, in my opinion. Make it yours.

  • http://www.liveside.net/members/emiliano84/default.aspx emiliano84

    gregsedwards u have right i have the same your ideas…why back to msn and not move definitevly and everything to live (live services and software) for have everything simple and integrated all togheter!!! for example i’d like move also msn.com to live.com and my.msn.com to my.live.com and video.msn.com to video.live.com!!!

  • http://www.liveside.net/members/Edgar-J_2E00_/default.aspx Edgar J.

    NOOO WAYYY! Go back to Windows Live QnA

    Everybody send a Feedback to http://feedback.live.com and go to Live QnA and wrtie about not supporting this!

  • http://www.liveside.net/members/Edgar-J_2E00_/default.aspx Edgar J.
  • http://www.liveside.net/members/rieuwa/default.aspx rieuwa

    I can’t believe it. I’ve always said that the MSN brand is divisive and needs to go, so QnA should have stayed with WL. *sigh*

  • http://msftandthefuture.spaces.live.com/ Quikboy

    What a step backwards! I think moving it to MSN will eventually kill it off. Shouldn’t QnA go to Windows Live? After all, it is pretty much users’ content, rather than publication content.

    I also have doubts on this Kristy person. MSN Radio? I actually used MSN Radio (which essentially was Pandora Radio with a skin…) and that died last year. TV Listings is actually good, but I don’t know what “Media Discovery” is.

    QnA seems like a great site, but they need to roll out new features FASTER, and then putting ads (preferably text) somewhere, and then they’ll have a strong user base. I think it has potential to be better than Yahoo! Answers (in a way, it already is), but there’s still too few active people.

    I really, really dislike the “conversational” questions. “Hey, how’s everyone doing today?” shouldn’t even be allowed. Do these people have lives? That’s why there needs to be more users, so we can skip over the extra bits. Conversational stuff should be separated out, maybe go on MSN, instead of all of QnA?

  • http://www.liveside.net/members/lbastie/default.aspx lbastie

    Also, QnA is only available in the US. Why not abroad, in France, Germany, Spain, where the QnA competition is less intense?

  • http://www.liveside.net/members/timetravelmachine/default.aspx timetravelmachine

    Go back to Windows Live QnA