SK Communications is an affiliate of a Korean conglomerate SK Group. SK Comms has the famous Cyworld and a major Korean web portal Nate.com. Nate offers Korea's most popular IM service, Nate On Messenger. SK Comms tries to create synergy among these assets, namely Cyworld, Nate portal, and Nate On Messenger.
As a part of such effort, SK Comms has created a knowledge Q&A service that is integrated with its Nate On Messenger. You ask a question using the IM, and someone pings back with an answer. As you actively participate in this knowledge Q&A process, you earn "knowledge mileage" which you can later redeem for Cyworld virtual money (Dotori).
The concept of the Nate Q&A service seems to be exactly the same as that of Aardvark, a new US service from ex-Googlers. However, while Aardvark is starting from a zero user base and is aggregating users through invitations, SK Comms has a leg up as it already has a great user base and can leverage on that immediately. According to SK Comms, the average turnout speed (i.e. how long it takes for a question to be answered) is less than 10 minutes (I think it's amazing). On average, Nate Q&A gets 1,000 questions and 3,000 answers daily. After the IM integration, Nate Q&A saw an increase of 22.3% in terms of the answers posted.
From startups to big companies like Amazon and Facebook, social knowledge filtering and recommendation seem to be one of the hottest topics. The devils would be in the details, and particular challenge would lie in accurately capturing user's interest and expertise. I think this issue is also related to monetization of social network, another important issue, as the flip side of social filtering would be social advertising (such as friends' endorsement). Nate Q&A attempts to untie the first knot by creating a instant knowledge exchange flow - a big first step towards the holy grail.
