| Good question, I played the Devil's Advocate inside my mind. Here is what I get as return / output: All the traditional elements of marketing are different: a) Is the target market specific? Yes for q. & s., no for c.c. b) Is the target market pro. / high-end users with high sense of fidelity to the topic / site / brand or casual consumers? Yes for q. & s., no for c.c. c) Does the target audience return to said sites regularly, participate in a community (with hierarchies, badges, comments and replies etc..)? Yes for q. & s., no for c.c. d) Do the specific topics discussed get relevant links from blogs, tuts sites etc.. from similiar fields Yes for q. & s., no for c.c. This is simply the tip of the iceberg. |
b) See above
c) Is there any evidence for this? ChaCha also has comments. The badges seem to be a gimmick to promote addictiveness, the novelty of which seems be gradually wearing off. Does a Google searcher care about the addictiveness of a website, or do they care about finding what they want?
d) The majority of topics are not discussed from relevant links from blogs and tutorial sites. In fact, many of the answers from Stackoverflow are taken from blogs and other websites.
I don't even see the tip of an iceberg.