Newspapers long ago found that readers liked a question-and-answer format on issues, and FAQs online have been with us from day one (particularly, it seems, for troubleshooting chapters in hardware and software manuals, instead of a live troubleshooter at the end of a phone line --- but I digress).
Now Hitwise is reporting a spectacular growth in another, broader iteration of this theme: the user-generated question-and-answer site. Peer-shared knowledge is a booming field, with U.S. visits up some 889 per cent over two years. When we can reach out to a community for answers, we do.
Yahoo! Answers has a strong market edge, with nearly three-quarters of the share, but watch out for WikiAnswers, which only launched last June and appears to be drafting off the Wikipedia brand quite successfully in the early going. It has commanded 18 per cent of the market in a matter of months.

Celebrities or presidential candidates? It's a bit of both right now in the U.S. as news media sites reach new traffic highs. Hitwise, in a recent report, notes that news media traffic online reached a 36-month high in February. Year over year, there was a 23-per-cent increase in the third week of February.
Now, part of this can be attributed to the presidential race. But celebrities, like Jennifer Lopez (giving birth) and Lindsay Lohan (giving forth), are also responsible --- to stretch the word's meaning --- in generating traffic.
Then again, "lunar eclipse" was the largest term searched on news media.
New York Times was the most-read news entity in print, but People.com did well, too.