Stack Overflow (or StackExchange rather) is a knowledge exchange platform with a brilliant design to encourage quality answers and fast response for your audience.

It’s public beta appearance attracted over 100 StackExchange sites within 2 months and some of the sites are already gain quite a bit of reputations:

• Moms4Mom – Moms and dads to ask questions about parenthood.
• Photo QnA – Ask questions about photography related
• Draw3Cards – Questions about Magic: The Gathering

With all the hype and its easiness, I decide to join the hype. Over the weekend I setup my own knowledge exchange platform: ZergOverflow, Q&As for Starcraft related questions (since I am such a Starcraft fan boy). The sign up to completion took no longer than 1 afternoon:

• Sign up for a beta account
• Setup a custom theme on top of well structure (and samantically named) HTML
• Throw in couple of questions
• Bought a domain name
• Get some friends to participate while exchange advises in StackExchange Meta

Currently, StackExchange is in beta 5 and there are still rough edges all over the place. But that wouldn’t be a bad thing as it is free during beta and every site owners are enjoying the benefits. Once the beta is over, the running cost will be US$129+ a month… that will become an expensive hobby for anyone.

I had a lot of fun: learning and making new friends. The learning curve is fairly low and I recommend website enthusiasts should give it a shot while it’s beta.