We have added two new ‘Updates’ features to Answers:

• One notifies your contacts each time you ask a question
• One notifies your contacts of each question you answer

Now, when you are at the “Preview your question” stage of asking a question, you will be prompted to “Manage your updates”. Here you choose if you want to share your updates to your social connections.

By default, updates will be set to “Don’t share my updates” to keep your content private unless you choose otherwise. To give you control over what and when you share, this option can be changed anytime you ask or answer a question. You have full control over this setting from the “Edit my profile” page too. By not sharing your updates, whatever you do on Answers will not appear on your Yahoo! profile.

When you ask or answer we offer a link to your profile to show you exactly who you are currently sharing updates with. Click the “Manage who sees your updates” link to be taken to profiles which is the place where you can control who see all of your Yahoo! Updates.

Had enough of seeing this message? Tick the box and we promise it won’t appear again.

We’ve tried tp make controlling your updates as simple as possible, but if you want more information about managing your Answers updates, you can find it through these Help pages: http://help.yahoo.com/l/sg/yahoo/answers/updates/

If you are still unsure about how your profile works or how to change features on your Yahoo! profile, check out our sister-blog www.yprofileblog.com and this article in particular: http://www.yprofileblog.com/blog/2009/03/31/answers-questions-about-profiles/ that is addressed to Answers users.

We hope you like the new feature, happy updating!

So how does this relate to Yahoo! Answers?  Currently, the image that displays for each user in Answers is brought in from each user’s 360 profile. In the coming weeks, Answers will start using profiles to display your image rather than 360.

Many of you use other Yahoo! services on a regular basis and we want to make it easier for you to manage your display image across all of our services.  By doing this, you’ll be able to update your profile image in one place and it will represent you wherever you go on the Yahoo! network.

We understand some of you opt to use a different image on Answers than what you use on other Yahoo! services. To confirm the image that we will soon be displaying on Answers we recommend that you go to http://profiles.yahoo.com now and activate your new profile. Once you’re there, you’ll be asked to confirm some information that you’ve previously shared with Yahoo! and select the image you’d like to share with the Answers community.

If you have never used other Yahoo! services and do not activate your profile, your image will show up as the “Grey Face”.

For those of you who display an avatar on Answers – don’t worry. This won’t change. Both avatars and nicknames will continue to remain the same on Answers.

We want to make the transition to your new profiles on Yahoo! as straight forward as possible for you. So go to http://profiles.yahoo.com now and let us know what you think of it!

Have more questions? Leave us a comment and let us know!