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Q&A community Fluther gets personal(ized)

Questions and answers service Fluther has a new feature that lets you create private groups of users you want to track.

Josh Lowensohn Former Senior Writer
Josh Lowensohn joined CNET in 2006 and now covers Apple. Before that, Josh wrote about everything from new Web start-ups, to remote-controlled robots that watch your house. Prior to joining CNET, Josh covered breaking video game news, as well as reviewing game software. His current console favorite is the Xbox 360.
Josh Lowensohn

Fluther, my favorite Q&A site has launched a new feature Wednesday called "Your Fluther." It lets you follow other people's activity on the site in one centralized, easy to parse feed. It's a companion to the built-in recommendation engine "just for you" that will feed you with questions based on topics listed in your profile and tracked site usage. More importantly, it's an easy way to create a private group of users who you'd rather keep an eye on than the growing public feed.

One thing I'd like to see added to that feed is users' responses to other people's questions as many of the site's best users seem to do more answering than asking. It would also be another good way to discover new worthwhile questions besides the centralized feed.

Fluther co-founder and CEO Ben Finkel tells me the site has been doubling in users every three months, which has been helped with a successful iPhone Web app and an overall increase in traffic from search engines. While Fluther has less users than more established services like wiki.answers.com and Yahoo Answers, I think it's got a far more advanced offering with things like live tracking of written answers and a count of how many people are watching. There's honestly nothing as cool as asking a question and seeing who is in the middle of responding before their post goes live.

If you see a user your like you can their question asking abilities with this new feed. Missing however is a way to track their responses. CNET Networks