Have a Burning Question? Get an Answer From LinkedIn

If you want to know how to fix your super dry, frizzy hair, you can find out by putting a question up on Yahoo Answers. But if you have a business question, and you want an answer from someone you trust, try putting up a question on LinkedIn Answers. It’s a new feature on the business social networking site LinkedIn. You can ask people specifically in your LinkedIn network (whom, presumably, you respect enough to have added them to your professional network), and when you click the LinkedIn Answers tab you can see questions from anyone in your extended network.

For instance, venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki (who is one connection away from me and thus is considered to be part of my extended network) asked, “What should I write my next book about?” That was three days ago, and he already has 83 answers (“How to make a career out of being a pundit. :-)”—Jason Calacanis; ” Why corporate blogs don’t work”—Reid Hoffman).

I asked, “What are the hottest new Web 2.0 companies out there that should be on my radar?” And I started getting answers right away, some of them pretty decent: Yelp.com, Geni, Threadless, Wikia, Dappit, Viddler, Twango, Moola, Loopt, iLike, and Virb.

And that’s just from eight answers in the first three hours after I posted my question.