Ico-Content

The developer of ICo-Content is a long-time DPer that I actually have come to know and trust over my time at DP named T0PS3O (at least as much as you can know and trust an anonymous internet acquaintance - I wouldn't have him babysit my kids, but I would buy something from him comfortably). It appears from what I can see at DP that he supports the product well.

What ICo-Content does is query Yahoo! Answers via their API for various keywords that you, the forum admin, configure. As it finds questions and answers, it builds the threads. You can configure how frequently it searches, and how frequently threads are created and replied to. It actually auto-registers forum users for you - which makes it an install and forget-it system from a technical standpoint.

Like many SEO / Webmaster tools, using the system most effectively entails some manual labor. Monitoring the posted threads, posting your own replies, and getting the lurkers to turn into regular posters is still the job of the forum admin.

You will see a set of duplicate content on your forum - particularly if another ICo-Content user has a very similar configuration to your own. It's not something you want to do long-term in order to just build a scraped-content kind of a forum. It is much more useful to use it for a shorter period of time to stimulate discussion and growth of an existing forum. If activity slows down, then you can re-implement it.

You could use this in conjunction with paid forum posters if you can find someone of quality that can do it for you. Alternatively you could start generating some discussion points manually.

I have no plans on using this system for this particular site - perhaps as a temporary testbed, but I've made it clear before that the discussion forum on this site is not intended to turn into an active discussion board.

The tool is legal and runs within Yahoo!'s TOS as it stands on 2/8/2007. For what it is, the price is a bargain. You could certainly implement something similar - but if you value your time at minimum wage, it still makes sense to go with Ico-Content unless you have a very compelling reason to roll your own.