Askalo is a social networking

Social network service

A social networking service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, who, for example, share interests and/or activities. A social network service consists of a representation of each user , his/her social...

 and user-generated

User-generated content

User generated content covers a range of media content available in a range of modern communications technologies. It entered mainstream usage during 2005 having arisen in web publishing and new media content production circles...

 local question-and-answer (Q&A) site.

Knowledge market

A knowledge market is a mechanism for distributing knowledge resources. There are two views on knowledge and how knowledge markets can function. One view uses a legal construct of intellectual property to make knowledge a typical scarce resource, so the traditional commodity market mechanism can be...

 Askalo users can ask questions about any local topic and share answers tailored to their individual needs.

History

Askalo was one of three local web applications, including Locanto

Locanto

Locanto is a worldwide online classifieds network with areas dedicated to jobs, personals, for rent, for sale, services, community, real estate, vehicles, and pets. Locanto Classifieds is available in 38 countries worldwide, covering over 1600 cities....

 and Yalwa

Yalwa

Yalwa is a worldwide business directory in which companies can list their business and advertise within their local neighborhood. The Yalwa Business Directory is available in 38 countries worldwide, covering over 1600 cities and 5 major languages.- About :...

, created by the German start-up company, Yalwa

Yalwa

Yalwa is a worldwide business directory in which companies can list their business and advertise within their local neighborhood. The Yalwa Business Directory is available in 38 countries worldwide, covering over 1600 cities and 5 major languages.- About :...

.

Location-based Q&A

Askalo questions and answers are focused on cities and local communities. The askalo communities are user-based. Users can post questions about geographic locations and receive responses from other users with local knowledge about these locations.

Global Community

The Askalo Q&A sites are available in the following countries:

Argentina - Australia - Austria - Belgium - Bolivia - Canada - Chile - China - Colombia - Dominican Republic - Ecuador - El Salvador - France - Germany- Hong Kong - India - Ireland - Jamaica - Japan - Malaysia - Mexico - Netherlands - New Zealand - Pakistan - Panama - Paraguay - Peru - Philippines - Puerto Rico - Singapore - South Africa - Spain - Switzerland - United Arab Emirates - United Kingdom - United States (in English and Spanish) - Uruguay - Venezuela

Languages that are currently covered:

Dutch

English

French

German

Spanish

Criticism

On September 30, 2010, the Internet tools and apps reviewer Usefultools.com stated, "The main problem with Askalo is simply that it doesn’t yet have enough users. Most of the cities on the site have questions, but no answers."

On December 9, 2010, commenting on the potential of Askalo, Social Media news website SocialMediaInfluence.com stated, "Askalo...[has]...not quite enough mass yet to get the response rate up."

Askalo traffic rank is lower than 320,000 and is actually trending down.

See also

• Answerbag
  Answerbag
  Answerbag is a collaborative online database of FAQs, where questions are asked and answered by users. Instead of the one question—one answer model, multiple answers to a given question are presented, in descending order of user ratings. As of December 2006, Answerbag was the second largest...
  
  
• MetaFilter
  MetaFilter
  MetaFilter, known as MeFi to its members, is a community weblog whose purpose is to share links and discuss content that users have discovered on the web.-Community:MetaFilter was founded by Matthew Haughey in 1999...
  
  
• Askville
  Askville
  Askville is a user-driven research site founded by Amazon.com and opened to the public on December 8, 2006.-History:Askville was co-founded by Korean-American former investment banker Joseph Park, previously co-founder of Kozmo.com . The documentary film e-Dreams portrays the fate of the company...
  
  
• Blurtit
  Blurtit
  Blurtit is a Q&A website where people ask questions and a community of regular users provide answers based on their knowledge or opinions. Blurtit was founded in 2006, and is based in Norwich in Norfolk, UK...
  
  
• FunAdvice
  FunAdvice.com
  FunAdvice.com is a social networking question-and-answer website. Users register to ask and answer questions, rate photos, chat, and write how-to guides...
  
  
• GirlsAskGuys
  GirlsAskGuys
  Girls Ask Guys.com is a Q&A website focusing on love, sex and relationships. The website offers its members tools to ask, answer questions, write articles, rate posts among others. The website was launched in June 2007 and has since been funded privately. Membership to GirlsAskGuys is free...
  
  
• Google Answers
  Google Answers
  Google Answers was an online knowledge market offered by Google that allowed users to post bounties for well researched answers to their queries. Asker-accepted answers cost $2 to $200. Google retained 25% of the researcher's reward and a 50 cent fee per question. In addition to the researcher's...
  
  
• Hunch
  Hunch (website)
  Hunch is a website, designed as a collective intelligence decision-making system that uses decision trees to make decisions based on users' interest. Hunch is building the 'taste graph' for the internet, mapping every person to every entity — and their affinity for that entity. The system asks...
  
  
• Knowledge Search
  Knowledge Search
  Knowledge Search service is an information-sharing tool launched in 2002 for Naver users. The tool allows users to ask just about any question, such as how to cook "ramen" or how to subscribe to international magazines via the Internet, and get answers from other users...
  
  
• LinkedIn Answers
  LinkedIn Answers
  LinkedIn Answers is a knowledge market service by LinkedIn. It is somewhat similar to 3form Free Knowledge Exchange, Naver Knowledge iN, Yahoo! Answers, and other knowledge markets...
  
  
• Wiki Answers

External links

• askalo homepage
• Interview with founder Klaus P. Gapp (in German)