Back in 1997, I got connected to the internet. Thinking it was owned by a single company, the first time I ran across a site like this... made me want to develop websites. I thought to myself, Why did this internet company make suck a crappy webpage. Then I found out it was a personal home page, and anyone could do it... I then spent the next 5 years making awesome sites just like this, sans MC Hammer.
There was nothing special about it... just a simple Q/A site. The concept was to get points for answering questions and those points made you look better to potential business partners. Quora and SE, are websites built around Q/A... Those are products... this was just a feature of linkedin
Yes it was popular... The majority of business owners are not techie. They probably do not know about StackOverflow. So answering questions asked by business owners on Linkedin was a great way to make an impression. The biggest problem with with linkedin it that it's just overrun with requiters and social media experts. It's not professional anymore.
Answers evolved from a Q/A section to a just another portal for a social media expert to just refer to someone in their network. It was really annoying... The shutting down of Answers should be a warning to anyone that is trying to build credibility on a network, it can close at anytime and all your answers/reputation is gone
I was thinking the same thing... To make this a better program they should buy someones debt, in the example they bought a $14,000 debt for $500. The person that had the debt removed should pay $1,000 back to OWS. Then OWS can buy 2 more... and so on. Unfortunately, the person that had the debt removed will probably just create more debt for themselves
It does bring back some good nostalgia.