Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Even at the best of times, naming is a contentious and emotional business. Whether you’re naming your baby, your boat, or your brand, the process can breed nearly endless deliberation. Keep these principles in mind as you scout the perfect name.

MAKE IT MEMORABLE 

The search engine has changed everything. Instead of worrying about your spot in the phone book, you need a name that’s relevant and truly compelling. The key to any name–simple or complex, abstract or descriptive–is grabbing attention and staying memorable.

Example: Yummy Tummy Koalas

Intriguing, irreverent, distinctly Australian: Yummy Tummy Koalas instantly conveys the fun factor of this brand.

FILL IT WITH MEANING

Choose a name that tells your brand’s story. Over time, you can expand the meaning of your name and add layers of depth to make it even more powerful–a visual identity, a color, a sound. The more significance your name carries, the more work it will do for you.

Example: Visa

From a word that initially meant only a stamp on a passport, Visa has surrounded its name with a host of associations–travel, access, opportunities, identity, official status–that allow it to tell the right story at the right time.

SAY IT OUT LOUD 

The best names are the ones that people can’t wait to tell their friends about. Names that roll off the tongue invite customers to become your viral marketing agency. Say, shout, and even sing names you’re considering to see which one will echo for years to come.

Example: Schweppes

Happy coincidence? In 1783, Johann Jacob Schweppe opted to name his bubbly, effervescent soft drinks after himself. More than 200 years later, consumers still love calling out his name.

DON’T WAIT TO FALL IN LOVE

Even the best name may not seem terrific the first time you hear it. As your name evolves into a brand, it will acquire more and richer associations. Give the names you’re considering a chance to grow on you–and try to imagine what they might stand for five or 10 years down the road.

Example: Google

Originally a variant of googol, the numeral one followed by 100 zeros, Google has come to represent a playful and innovative culture that delivers everything from email to operating systems.

LISTEN TO YOUR FEAR 

Great names grab your attention by breaking the rules–but a name that defies your expectations may also appear scary. Look past the fear and you’ll find  energy and possibility. That buzz of surprise could be telling you that you’ve found a name that stands out.

Example: BlackBerry

ProMail, an early name candidate for what we know today as the BlackBerry, probably would have been an easier sell in RIM’s executive suite. But once users got their hands on the perfectly sized device, it became obvious which name was the perfect fit.

STAND OUT IN A CROWD 

If you are different, you want to sound different. Use your name to focus on what makes your brand special. Look at your category and where it’s headed. What do customers expect? How can your name signal something new?

Example: W Hotels

In a market dominated by the prosaic names of people and places–Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt, and Radisson–W had the nerve to sound young, energetic, and stylish. Today, it’s the premier destination for business travelers who want to balance style with substance.

TOO MUCH IS NEVER ENOUGH

The first hundred names you think of are likely to be the same ones your competitors tossed around. Use naming specialists to develop thousands of alternatives. To arrive at a name that meets all your objectives, you need a list that’s both broad and deep.

Example: Accenture

Thousands of names were created, hundreds were screened, and scores were considered. One name rose to the top, and now countless conversations center around this brand’s “Accent on the future.”

EXPECT ITS STORY TO EVOLVE

There are always reasons to dislike a name, but you can’t make the right decision if you never make any decision at all. Remember that names are just one part of your brand, and they’re elastic–you can stretch them to mean what you want.

Example: Virgin

As a word, “virgin” brings to mind anything from wool and olive oil to Mary and The Material Girl. But as a brand name, Virgin has come to stand for a provocative attitude that can sell everything from prepaid mobile phones to vacations in orbit.

One of the Web’s oldest portals, MSN, is about to dive headfirst into one of the Internet’s hottest trends: Social Media.

No, Microsoft, which runs MSN, is not launching its own social network. Instead, the 17-year-old content destination is unveiling a new social reader, msnNOW, on Facebook, the Web and in a new web-based mobile interface.

The initiative is actually two components. According to MSN General Manager Bob Visse, a team of 20 editors will use a new Demand Dashboard to measure velocity and volume of trending topics across Facebook, Twitter, the Bing search engine and BreakingNews.com (a joint MSN/NBC venture).

Stories that are trending will appear on msnNOW in a constantly updating “Biggest Movers” box. In addition, a team of editors will select topics and stories from among those social (and search) trends and create 100 word write-ups for posts that will appear in msnNOW’s What’s Trending homepage.

The page, which will look pretty much the same on the web and in the new Facebook app, will feature a large main story and a grid of other popular stories below. Visse described it as a “river of real-time content”. Within each area, reader will find small icons for Twitter, Facebook and BreakingNews.com. The presence of each will indicate on which social networks the stories and topics are trending.

These are not icons for sharing these posts, but Visse promised that sharing options would be obvious on the Web site and in the Facebook app, where there will be opportunities to share and comment.

Along with each MSN-created post, readers will find related Bing search terms, Tweets and other content. Not every topic or story will get an MSN write-up. For those, What’s Trending will link to a Bing result, which will also offer a link directly to the original content source. “We give the best of the web regardless of where that content or hot story originated from,” Visse told us.

Visse explained that MSN is targeting a younger “always socially connected consumer who lives an online lifestyle for information gathering and seeking.” That may mean that some of the trending content will be a little edgier than what you traditionally see on the portal. It’s all designed to start a conversation. Even the design has the younger demo in mind. It’s image-centric, with what Visse calls “short, pithy headlines.”

It’s also one of the first times that MSN has launched a new product across three separate platforms at once and, as Visse noted, it’s the first time MSN “has done anything interesting with the Facebook social reader experience.” msnNOW, however, will not launch with Google+ integration, though Visse said Microsoft is open to tracking volume and acceleration on the still young social network at a future date.

Visse calls the msnNOW project a “transformative experience for MSN.” Even so, the design is still decidedly MSN-centric across all platforms. Visse contends that while msnNOW is not yet a Metro design (the cubist-look Microsoft is painting across virtually all of its interfaces), msnNOW’s “component-like design is not a big leap to get a Metro-like design.”

The intention with the current look is for a really good, super-easy-to-use interface. The mobile interface, in particular, is designed for easy touch and swipe consumption across multiple mobile devices (the mobile web site should work well on the latest iOS, Windows Phone and Android browsers).

Though MSN currently enjoys a reported 125 million monthly visitors, with 75 million visiting the MSN portal homepage each month, msnNOW will not take over that hot destination. Visse told Mashable that msnNOW will have a hard and visible link from the MSN homepage and msnNOW content that does make the main homepage will feature msnNOW artwork and insignias.

msnNOW is an interesting bet for Microsoft, the big software company without its own big social network. Can it be the aggregator instead of the creator? And will content and media companies like the 100-word write-ups — or will they think such stories are cannibalizing their content?

Visse, though, has other concerns. “I’m waiting to see how it works out. Did we connect with the younger demo in the way I think we’re going to? Are the edit choices and the way we package them together interesting and exciting for users?” All good questions and Visse acknowledges that he won’t know the answers until they launch the product.

What do you think of msnNOW? Check it out and then give us your critique in the comments below.

Earlier this week, Google launched Search+, and immediately the tech world cried foul. The new features heavily promote content from Google+, the company’s social network, at the top of its search results, all but turning the search engine into a massive advertisement for one of Google’s own products–a big no-no if you’ve been paying any attention to Google’s antitrust hearings.

But Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt says the search engine isn’t favoring Google+ content; rather, it would treat content from Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks equally in its search results–that is, if Twitter and Facebook would only grant it access to their data.

It’s a smart but incredibly shady move on Google’s part. On the one hand, Google has made it sound like it has fairly offered to index competitor social data in its results; on the other hand, Google is essentially extorting these competitors for their social data. If Facebook and Twitter ultimately decide not to permit Google access to their data, that’s great news for Google, which will get to promote its own social network in the billions of queries it receives daily; and if Facebook and Twitter ultimately decide to permit Google access to their data, then that’s great news for Google, too, since Google will improve its social search, and eliminate any competitive edge from Facebook, Twitter, Bing, and any other social or search networks.

Today, we see the result of this new world Google has created. Foursquare unveiled its own personalized search engine on Thursday, taking advantage of the startup’s bread and butter: the 1.5 billion user check-ins it mines for location and merchant results. Now, by heading to Foursquare.com, users can search for local restaurants or bars or trips based on this data. Essentially, this is Foursquare’s version of Google Maps, and it’s an indication of how fragmented the future of search might become.

Before, search was always performed in one place. We’d head to Google, Yahoo, or AskJeeves, search engines that would crawl the web and index every page for us. But now, as the data these engines mine becomes proprietary and more valuable to its owners, Google and modern engines such as Bing are losing access to indexing that data. So, if you want to search the social graph, you must go directly to Facebook. If you want to see real-time news and status updates, you search on Twitter, which ended its data-sharing agreement with Google last summer. And if you want mobile and location data, does Foursquare have any plans to share its data with Google or Bing?

“No,” says Alex Rainert, Foursquare’s head of product. “We’re focused on search around the intersection of social and local.”

While Rainert says it’s hard to speak to the larger strategic question, as a consumer, he does feel that “you expect to go to a place like Google or Bing and find the best content you’re looking for.” But the more data becomes core to the businesses of Google’s competitors, the more fragmented search will become. So you’re not only heading to Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare for their social data, but you might also be heading to Kayak for travel searches or Instagram for images or LinkedIn for professional networking.

For this reason, these services can’t give into Google and let the search giant index their data. “In effect, Google would be forcing them to hurt their business if they were to open the data up,” argued M.G. Siegler in a blog post.

That’s why Google has developed Google+ to compete with Facebook and Twitter, and why it’s acquired companies such as ITA to compete with engines like Kayak. It’s why Bing has worked hard to partner with Facebook, Twitter, and Kayak.

And it’s why with Search+, Google has caused a tremendous amount of controversy, and potentially an issue with the FTC, for promoting its own product in its search results.

“For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results anytime they wanted to find something on the Internet,” Twitter said in a statement. “Often, they want to know more about world events and breaking news. Twitter has emerged as a vital source of this real-time information, with more than 100 million users sending 250 million Tweets every day on virtually every topic…We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.”

Responded Google, in a post on Google+: “We are a bit surprised by Twitter’s comments about Search plus Your World, because they chose not to renew their agreement with us.”

If you want to find that post, feel free to search on Google.

Image: Flickr user CowGummy

This week saw the launch of what could be seen as a revolutionary cell phone service in France. Contingent on a couple of rules, Free.fr is offering an all-but-free cell phone service that promises truly unlimited data, voice, and SMS monthly tariffs. At the very least, the disruptive innovation is seen likely to kick off a price war with existing carriers, which is good for consumers. But recent news developments suggest Americans shouldn’t hold their breath for the same sort of innovation any time soon–the existing carriers would strangle it.

Free.fr is an established broadband provider in France, but it’s got expansionist plans that leverage its network to produce a wholly new service: Cell phone connectivity. Founder Xavier Niel, as GigaOm notes, has been working on the plan for a while, starting with a flat-rate broadband service with IPTV and free wired phone calls on the top of its core data system (essentially because all these things strapped onto a notional “Internet service” are all but identical sorts of digital data). Free.fr was largely seeing its services as a clever vanilla data pipe into user’s homes, with additions like TV as a deal-maker for its millions of subscribers.

Niel applied for some mobile phone spectrum during a process back in 2007, and has now rolled out Free.fr’s newest and most disruptive offering. By using the install-base’s home routers, which are both Wi-fi hubs and set-top boxes for each subscriber household and free-access wireless hubs for nearby roaming users (similar to Fon’s model, or other systems in other countries like Portugal’s Zon boxes), and by issuing new boxes which are also cell network femtocells, Free has a wireless network that has potentially very broad coverage and an impressive flexibility and redundancy: Data is routed over Wi-fi for preference, but then the femtocells are also present for improved accessibility. The complex, layered system lets Free offer, for an impressively low fee of €20 ($26) a month (less if you’re a Free subscriber), free phone calls to tens of countries and both unlimited mobile data access and SMS sending. And it’s “sans engagement”–without contract.

There are plenty of potential blockages ahead on Free.fr’s roadmap to success, and some are even questioning how on Earth it’ll wrangle a profit out of its offers. But it’s so very clever and devastatingly cheap, it’s bound to push bigger established cell phone carriers like Vodafone to compete on at least some sort of pricing or facilities-offered basis. And that’s great for French cell phone users.

If you’re a U.S. cell phone subscriber you may have to pick yourself off the floor at this point. In an environment where U.S. providers (apparently with Sprint as a bit of a stand-out exception) are reneging on promises to unlimited mobile data, where SMS fees are still a wicked add-on to everyone’s monthly bill–just as the U.S. is going text-crazy–and even giants like Verizon try to nickel-and-dime every customer, Free’s model is contrarian. Could a model like Free’s ever work in the U.S.? Technologically it’s entirely possible, although coverage may be an issue in some of the more so-called “remote” regions of the U.S. where even broadband penetration is weak. But it seems unlikely. Not least because of recent revelations about Google’s and Apple’s plans to totally disrupt the cell phone industry.

For example: Steve Jobs, in the early days of the iPhone project, imagined that Apple could blanket the U.S. with a cell phone network all of Apple’s own. It would’ve been Wi-Fi based rather than GSM or CDMA (recognize that from Free.fr’s model?), and Jobs tried for three years to negotiate, bully, and finagle it into existence. It failed. Instead Apple forced AT&T to accept some very unusual terms as part of its exclusive deal–like zero AT&T branding on the Phone, and no modifications of the OS…and then rolled these terms out across the world to challenge accepted carrier practices. It’s not as revolutionary as a carrier-obsoleting wireless grid, but it’s a start, and Apple’s been trying similar apple cart-upsetting plans since.

Google too, it’s now known, had planned for its original own-brand Nexus phone, sold via its own carrier-independent online store–to be a super-cheap disruptive device, perhaps even offering zero costs for the device and some of its uses thanks to deeply-embedded social-informed advertising. Would you accept frequent ads in your cell phone experience in exchange for a zero-fee, or at least dramatically smaller, monthly bill? Our money is on about 50% of the public saying yes to that. But reports suggest that Google’s efforts were stymied in no small amount by the cell phone carriers themselves, reluctant to cede any sort of variation on their business model.

Since then Google has seemed to play along with the carriers much more than you’d perhaps expect for an open OS, and has caused recent headlines like “Why I hate Android” due to the seemingly broken promise of the supposedly unrestrained OS from a company who’s motto is “Don’t be evil”–no matter how awkwardly Google tries to defend it.

Are the carriers really that wicked? You may be tempted to think so when you consider that Verizon is blocking Google’s Wallet on its version of compatible Android phones, citing security issues–but really it’s because it’s in a consortium to promote a different model for the future of digital payment (a revolution that could actually change your life more then you think). More grist to this mill comes from fresh revelations from Motorola’s CEO Sanjay Jha, who this week noted, “Verizon and AT&T don’t want seven stock Ice Cream Sandwich devices on their shelves … The vast majority of the changes we make to the OS are to meet the requirements that carriers have.” In other words, rather than supporting a stock, uniform edition of Android–which would enable much better cross-platform compatibility, better apps and a more consistent high-quality user experience–the carriers are forcing makers to tweak and customize Android to suit their (not necessarily technical-minded or user experience-forward) agendas, which explains all those own-brand carrier apps that smatter your home page.

Nokia, desperate to make a comeback into the smartphone world with its partnership with Microsoft, is also promising unique phones to each of the U.S. carriers it’s doing business with. Is that a good thing? You may argue yes, because it means the phones could be tailored to the special sweetner offerings of each carrier, tricks like a music service, app store, or what not. But if you take a broader view, this is rather odd. Nokia and Microsoft are spending countless millions to hone, refine, and polish their phones–from both a hardware and software point of view, because it’s the synergy and user experience that’s important as Apple’s proved and as Microsoft has agreed with–and they’re about to let a mere datapipeline operator dictate how some of that will work.

If one of the biggest companies in the world, Apple, and the global giant of search engine tech and owner of the most-prevalent smartphone OS, Google, can’t break the stranglehold of the U.S. cell phone carriers on the market, let alone chip away at their armor-clad business models, then you’re allowed to sadly consider that it’s unlikely that a model ilke Free.fr’s would ever manage to shake up the U.S. industry in the near term.

Image: Flickr user greyloch

Chat about this news with Kit Eaton on Twitter and Fast Company too.

Jindrich Liska is founder and CEO of Jobmagic, a leading social recruiting platform which enables employers to hire candidates on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Jindrich has pioneered many social recruiting approaches which are now used worldwide by brands such as Disney, J.Crew and Compuware.

The 2011 job market is ending on a positive note. With unemployment shrinking to a mere 8.6% — its lowest level since May 2008 — and a steadily growing economy, businesses are planning on hiring and recruiting even more as their confidence in customer demand builds.

In this new, growing market, those seeking their next dream job should cultivate their presence and contacts strategically in places where employers will be on the lookout for the best talent. According to the MSU survey PDF of more than 3,000 companies conducted last month, social media has flourished as a burgeoning recruitment strategy, becoming a more mainstream approach for companies of all sizes and industries, even the most conservative. For job seekers, social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter have established new ways getting discovered by employers, as well as directly reaching recruiters and hiring managers.

Here’s the scoop on what job seekers should know in order to be successful in today’s digital job market.

Your Social Media Profiles Are as Important Your Resume (If Not More Important)

The MSU report asserts that 36% of companies surveyed are using social media for recruiting. In today’s competitive market, recruiters look for the most current information on candidates, which is readily and easily available on social networks. Job seekers should actively include links to their complete and up-to-date Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter profiles in their applications. When creating your profiles, do not just import your resume — it often contains too much detailed information. Rather, build your profile from scratch with a concise description of your prior experience to grab a recruiter’s attention. To make yourself more discoverable, search engine optimize your title and skills.

Be sure to use social news streams as a dynamic extension of your traditional resume. Employers are interested in candidates who are passionate about their work. Job hopefuls should share interesting and relevant news about your industries and areas of expertise, demonstrating their knowledge and establishing yourself as an essential player in the fields. While the social news dialogue ought to maintain a professional tone, you should also reveal yourself to be a fun, authentic individual.

80% of Success is Showing up

Social media enables us to stand out, to be more noticeable, to differentiate ourselves from the masses and to tell the whole story behind and beyond a one-page resume. When contributing to your news streams and profiles, choose current topics of interest, start participating in discussions about your professional field and industry trends, and share your own hands-on tricks of the trade. Many companies are now making use of Facebook Pages that are dedicated exclusively to careers and hiring. These pages are generally run by recruiters and talent acquisition professionals that are looking to attract and hire candidates. Savvy job seekers should make use of these pages and proactively ask questions about job openings, the specifics of a company’s interview process, or any upcoming career events. Responses are generally instantaneous, and you will quickly establish connections within the company.

Additionally, every field has its own industry thought leaders broadcasting on Twitter. You should follow the influencers in your field, contribute to the discussion and share it with others who might be interested. Take advantage of @-mention feature to keep participants engaged and include hashtags to increase the visibility of your tweets.

You should also join LinkedIn Groups related to your field or moderated by a company you are interested in. Since hiring managers are always on the lookout for team players, you should establish a reputation by sharing your opinion, answering questions and offering advice in the group discussion forums. Join specific company groups to gain additional insight and keep up on the latest hiring news. Recruiters are very active in these groups, and taking steps to establish a positive LinkedIn presence will help to assure that you get a call.

Social Networks Enable Direct Interaction

There was a time when contacting recruiters on job sites and boards was difficult, and proactively reaching out to hiring managers was nearly impossible. Social media has created a culture of openness, and has all but eliminated the ‘black hole’ that resumes have fallen into for decades. Many companies even highlight their recruiters on job postings; not only can you contact a recruiter directly, but you can often view recruiters’ and hiring managers’ social media profiles before contacting them.

Job seekers need to connect to recruiters who are hiring in their field and location. If you don’t know them directly, subscribe to them on Facebook or follow them on Twitter to stay current on all job openings, and work towards developing a positive relationship with them.

Your Networks Help You Find Jobs (and Help Employers Find You)

More companies than ever are cutting their job advertising budgets, opting to channel their recruiting efforts through referral hiring. The MSU report indicates that 44% of companies use referral hiring, and 49% tap into alumni networks in order to recruit. Companies are drawing on their employee’s social networks to share jobs and attract the most qualified candidates. The more extensive your personal network is, the greater your odds of encountering these unadvertised job opportunities.

Grow your networks by reaching out and connecting to people with whom you have either professional or personal relationships. If you don’t know the person well, begin by subscribing to their feed or ask a friend for an introduction. As in real life, opportunities can arise from any connection — a co-worker, a friend, a neighbor, etc. Many companies publish their job openings and career events on their Facebook Pages, so connect to the pages of companies that are of interest to you to start receiving active job openings in your news feed with little effort.

With the economy on the mend and hiring rates rising, job seekers should not hesitate to break into the social media sphere. Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter offer an abundance of ways to connect with companies, foster your professional reputation, gain exposure to job postings, and ultimately, realize your professional aspirations. Establish your online professional brand and presence now. Your dream job is waiting for you.

Whether it opens the doors of knowledge or turns us into lazy researchers, the web can instantly gratify most inquiries. So when we wondered which questions weighed heaviest on the minds of Internet users this year, we naturally turned to the same Q&A sites that they did.

We asked Formspring, Ask.com, Quora and ChaCha to compile lists of their most popular questions of 2011. Since all of the sites take different approaches to Q&A, we let them choose their own criteria for what constitutes “popular.”

Whether it’s possible to become Batman (it doesn’t look good) to who started Occupy Wall Street (debatable), here’s what the web wanted to know this year.

1. Quora

What it is: Quora is a crowdsourced social Q&A forum that tends toward long-form answers.

Criteria: The most viewed questions.

• 10. What’s the best way to escape the police in a high-speed car chase? Former patrol officer Justin Freeman details what it would take to escape from the police – and why it’s a bad idea.
• 9. What is the worst piece of design ever done? People responded with more than 100 frustrations, pet peeves and things that could be improved about the world.
• 8. Is Amy Chua right when she explains “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” in an op/ed in the Wall Street Journal? Users shared powerful personal stories about parenting and growing up Asian-American, along with follow-up questions answered by Amy Chua herself.
• 7. Given our current technology and with the proper training, would it be possible for someone to become Batman? Screenwriter Mark Hughes delivers an extraordinarily entertaining answer about whether it’d possible to be Batman in the real world.
• 6. Why did Twitter suspend UberTwitter? Bill Gross, founder of UberMedia, shares what happened to his company.
• 5. Why did Steve Jobs choose not to effectively treat his cancer? Cancer researcher Ramzi Amri takes a sad look back at the progression of Steve Jobs’s disease.
• 4. How does a programmer become a brogrammer? A discussion of an emerging Silicon Valley subculture.
• 3. What are some interesting examples of photographs which show historical figures in unexpected places or company? Unexpected pairings of historical figures: Bill Clinton with John F. Kennedy, Nikola Tesla with Mark Twain, Salvador Dalí with Walt Disney.
• 2. What’s it like to be a drug dealer? A nerve-wracking first-person account of one person’s rise and fall in drug trafficking.
• 1. What’s the most epic photo ever taken? A powerful tour of the most important, most poignant and most beautiful photographs ever taken.

2. Ask.com

What it is: Ask.com is a Q&A platform turned search engine turned back to Q&A platform. It directs questions to people who are likely to have the best answers.

Criteria: The top “trending questions” posed by Ask.com’s 60 million users from Jan. 1, 2011 to Dec. 14, 2011. Ask.com defines trending questions as those that are posed and viewed most frequently by users.

Health, Nutrition and Fitness:

• 1. Healthcare Plan: Is the healthcare plan unconstitutional?
• 2. Health Insurance: How can I get affordable health insurance?
• 3. Juice Cleanse: What’s the best juice cleanse?

TV and Movies:

• 1. Kim Kardashian: Was Kim Kardashian’s wedding fake?
• 2. Oprah Winfrey: When is the Oprah finale?
• 3. Regis Philbin: Who is replacing Regis Philbin?

Technology:

• 1. iPhone: When will Apple release the iPhone 5?
• 2. Google: How can I join Google+?
• 3. Facebook: How can I keep my Facebook wall private?

Business:

• 1. Occupy Wall Street: Who started Occupy Wall Street?
• 2. Facebook: Is Facebook going public?
• 3. Unemployment: Is the unemployment rate getting lower?

3. Formspring

What it is: Formspring is a social Q&A platform that lets users ask and answer questions.

Criteria: Most “smiles” to a response. Smiles are similar to Facebook Likes.

• 5. When was the last time you listened to that little voice in your head and what was it? Five minutes ago and it told me to eat 14 Oreos, which I did. – Sarah Lane, 1,182 Smiles.
• 4. Who do you look up to? <>People taller than me. – Fred Figglehorn, 1,327 Smiles.</>
• 3. When in 2012 is the part 2 of Breaking Dawn on screens? November 16, 2012 – Taylor Lautner, 1,453 Smiles.
• 2. What do you think of Brazil? I love Brazil! – Enrique Iglesias, 1,702 Smiles.
• 1. Who’s the smartest woman you have ever known? Justin Bieber – 30H!3, 3,358 Smiles.

4. ChaCha

What it is: ChaCha is an ad-supported service that employes 180,000 freelance “guides” to answer your questions immediately.

Criteria: Most answered questions (in no particular order).

• Is Justin Bieber a father?
• What are the lyrics to Super Bass by Nicki Minaj?
• When will The Hunger Games come to theatres?
• What is a Gleek?
• Who is Steve Jobs?
• When does Modern Warfare 3 come out?
• Is Osama Bin Laden dead?
• How did Amy Winehouse die?

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, fotosipsak