Qhub, a British startup launched on Wednesday by the founders of the popular question-and-answer site Blurtit.com, is a site for building other Q&A sites.
Community Q&A sites, where people answer one another's questions, are one of the more utilitarian results of the user-generated content trend among startups. Instead of snarky one-liners, members share their hands-on knowledge.
The best Q&A sites are focused and specialized, rather than general. Bizmore, for example, is designed specifically for mid-sized business executives.
With that in mind, co-founders Tim O'Shea and Christopher Lee have created tools to let anyone build a Q&A site about anything. There's a how-to tutorial, and of course you can use Qhub to ask about Qhub.
The sites pay Qhub by serving automated ads. Or, for $20 a month, you can remove the ads. Another $20 will even remove Qhub's branding so your site will seem like a standalone entity.
Of course, it's always good to know what other topics have their own specialized Q&A communities. Qhub will inevitably spawn a directory of topical sites built atop the platform. That'll be the best answer to any question.
For now, Qhub is bootstrap-funded and is run mostly by Lee and O'Shea.