At the beginning of this year, we reported that Microsoft was working on curating human answers in a new service called Bing Distill. The word distill, for those curious, means “to extract the essential meaning or most important aspects of.” The service is simple — use your know-how to answer questions people are asking on Bing. Help the community create the best answers when you give feedback. And you can edit your answers and those created by other community members.
For longtime Microsoft followers, you may recall that Microsoft has tried something similar before, in what became “Windows Live QnA.” At that time, Windows Live QnA was an attempt to replicate the popular Yahoo! Answers service, while bringing those search results back into Bing (or Live Search, at the time).
“Millions ask, you answer. Join Bing Distill and be part of the community that answers the questions everyone is searching for,” the Bing Distill website states. You can head over to www.bing.com/distill to sign up for the service right now using your Microsoft Account to request an invite.
No word on when this service will go live, but it does appear that Microsoft is about ready to launch the service in Beta. We’ll have more on Bing Distill as information becomes available. In the mean time, you can head over to the Distill website and sign up for an invite.
Thanks for the tip, Jackson!
Further reading: Bing, Bing Distill, Microsoft
