"Follow" Your Favorite Expert Topics

Experts123 launched the new Follow feature today, which allows users to track their favorite topics and access them through their profiles.

This feature is available for all topics. For example, if you are interested in the topic health, you can click the Follow button in the top right-hand corner of that page.

Visit the Popular Article Tags box on the homepage and click on your favorite subject. From there, you can follow the topic.

It's easy to access, too. On your profile, there is now a "Following" tab next to your Answers, Notifications, and Assignments tabs. This tab filters all of the subjects you are following into one steady feed. No longer do you have to search the rest of the site to get to the topics you visit the most frequently. You will have instant access on your profile to all questions, answers, and articles pertaining to this topic.

What happens if you decide you don't want to follow a topic anymore? You can visit that topic's page and click Unfollow in the same spot as the Follow button was before you followed the topic. Once you click the Follow button, it transforms into Unfollow for easy user interaction with the site. Another easy way to narrow down which topics you are following is to click the "x" next to the topic header on the Following tab of your profile.

Experts123 is constantly transforming the site to make it easier for users to share their information and access the information that they need. We are very excited about the new Follow feature.

Keep participating at Experts123.com for more great opportunities to make some money and share your expertise. Remember, you still have a chance to enter to win a free iPad until August 31, 2010!

How Experts123 Helped Me: Wisdom Teeth

We recently got this letter from one of our users about how Experts123 helped her cope with her oral surgery. Here is what she wrote:

Dear Experts123,

I had always dreaded getting my wisdom teeth pulled. I had heard of horror stories of people having infected gums and permanently swollen cheeks and infections for days. I had just started a new job didn't have time to be completely debilitated, so I decided that I had to look up best and worst case scenarios just to put my mind at ease and prepare myself (and my boss) for what was going to be in store.

Here were the justifications for my fear:
My dentist had originally said that I had enough room in my mouth to keep my three wisdom teeth—but then decided that I had to get the surgery. Was my mouth shrinking? Why the sudden change of heart? Maybe this was a scam…

My dentist would not use anesthetics to put me under while he was operating—meaning that I would be awake. I had flashbacks to that one mediocre Hayden Christensen movie where the doctors thought they gave him enough anesthetic, but he was awake the whole time, felt everything, and heard the doctors plotting his death. Great.

Finally, why do I have 3 wisdom teeth? That’s an odd number. I’ve heard of people having 2 or maybe 4, but never 3. Was I a mutant?

So, since I had been active on Experts123 recently, I decided to look up my information there. I knew that if it wasn’t already posted, I could ask a question and someone would answer it relatively quickly.

I searched “wisdom teeth.” The first 3 questions that came up were:

What are wisdom teeth?
Why do wisdom teeth need to be removed?
When is the best time to remove wisdom teeth?

Perfect. So I scrolled through each of these—the first gave me a background about wisdom teeth. Did you know that Wisdom teeth got their name because they were meant to grow in when you turn 18—when we are supposedly wiser? There also is no set number of wisdom teeth. The amount of teeth depends on the person. Some people had stories of having one and some of having seven.

The second question was smooth sailing—my dentist was right and didn’t want to just make a quick buck (or $400) from me. It was time to get them pulled because it was messing up my bite, and I wouldn’t be able to reach them with a toothbrush.

But the third question gave me a fright—it said that people should only get their wisdom teeth pulled when the tooth roots are three-quarters developed to avoid nerve damage. Well, my three wisdom teeth were all completely grown in—and I’m almost 22, two years older than the upper age limit they recommend.

Hoping I would be a fast healer, I looked up wisdom teeth complications. Great—I was at risk for nerve damage, cysts, tumors, gum and jaw disease, and plaque build-up.

Well, I researched some more. It said that these complications only occur if you neglect the dentist’s care recommendations. As long as I paid attention to my doctor’s orders, I would be fine. Although it is a routine surgery, it was my first one! I was still anxious, but less so because of the information I found on Experts123.

Luckily, I was a fast healer, and looking back, I had nothing to be afraid of. My jaw as a little sore when I couldn’t be on the pain meds, but I healed in less than a week!

Thanks to Experts123, I was able to know what could have happened to me from the perspectives of real people with real experience, not just some encyclopedia-robot. I went into the surgery with ease now can share my experiences on Experts123 and put other peoples’ minds at ease, too.

Sincerely,
Recently Toothless

At Experts123 we love hearing stories about how our online community of experts helped each other out.

If you ever want to share your stories about how Experts123 helped you, email us at customerservice@experts123.com, and we will share it!

Remember to keep on participating on Experts123.com to keep entering to win a free Apple iPad and check us out on Twitter for up to the minute news and links.

$ Questions

Experts, you may have noticed a new icon on your toolbar that says "$ Questions"...

Well, many of you have voiced some suggestions to opening up all of the questions on our site to revenue share. So we did! There are now over 4,000 questions available at your fingertips on a revenue share basis. This is just the jumping off point--we are working very hard so that eventually we can open up the entire question and answer site to revenue share.

Now, our paid contributors can reap more of the benefits of our online community of experts. This new "$ Questions" icon stands for Revenue Share Questions and Answers, where you can go ask questions and contribute to the questions available with the regular revenue share policy. There are so many to choose from.

The coolest part is that we are going to show a leader board for our Top Revenue Share Writers! The way you join this virtual hall of fame is simple: you must write at least 200 words of original content for as many questions as you can posted on the $ Questions board. Since revenue share is based on the reputation and quality of your answers, the more credibility and quality you present, the more traffic your answers will get, and the more money you'll make! Remember, it is called Experts123, so only answer questions that you are knowledgeable about. To see our current Top Contributors, visit Experts123.com.

We also encourage you to get involved and to "Like" answers that you find helpful. Plus, you can "Like" up to 10 answers per day to still be entered in our Free Apple iPad Giveaway! The possibilities at Experts123.com are endless.

Tweet Tweet, Experts!

If you didn't know it already, Experts123 is on twitter!

Twitter is a social phenomenon that has really taken off in the last few years. Aside from participating in all of the twitter celebrity hype and being in the loop 24/7, you will be able to follow all of our Experts123 tweets which will be featuring our favorite questions, answers, articles and experts. If you catch our attention or are doing extraordinary work, we will tweet you! Not only will this ensure more traffic to your contributions, but also it will give you more exposure. Just go to www.twitter.com/experts123, or search for us. Our username is Experts123.

On another exciting note, keep asking and answering those questions, experts! The Free Apple iPad Giveaway is still in full force, and we encourage you to enter as many times as possible. You only have less than two months left.

Keep checking us out here on our blog, and now on twitter. There might even be some incentives to following and re-tweeting us!