Ask a Question, the Crowd has an Answer

There probably isn't too much you can't find out on the Internet with some digging. But maybe you just don' t have a lot of time to sort through the 11,734,567 links Google has served up in 1.36 seconds. Maybe what you need to know is just too Web 2.0 to connect the dots without a bit of explanation. Maybe calling your local reference librarian is just too 20th century.

Enter the virtual human touch.

Some are free and some are not, but there are a growing number of Internet reference services that answer specific question, just for you. These are match-making services that use the Web to connect a person with a question to another person with an answer. People making a market in information and using the Internet pretty much only to connect and communicate.

• Who uses these sites?
• Are these answers good enough for mission critical problems?
• Are the answers any more or less reliable than static information?
• Does the crowd do any more than just the legwork you didn't want to do, or is there a generous component of personal experience?
• What is a service like this worth?