Can Someone Explain the Q&A Craze?

I really want to know what’s up with the sudden interest in Q&A type sites?  Once upon a time, there was Yahoo Answers, a site run by Yahoo which let users ask questions and receive answers from other users.  Which to me, always seemed like nothing more then an Internet forum, such as the one I run (for tech stuff).  Then along came Mahalo Answers, which is essentially a more “modernized” Yahoo Answers, but still, nothing more than a Q&A site.

More recently, we were introduced to Formspring.me, which is another Q&A site, however, it’s more of a vanity site in my opinion, because people ask questions specifically about you.  So I’ll let that one slide, it’s a bit of a different spin to the whole Q&A thing.  However, now we have seen indications that Facebook may be starting their own Q&A service within Facebook itself.  On top of Facebook possibly launching their own Q&A service, the former CTO of Facebook, launched his own Q&A service called Quora.  Hell.  Even my friend Chris Pirillo launched his own Q&A service on Lockergnome.

Which leads me to the question: am I missing something here?  I don’t mean from a traffic perspective, because I understand these types of services can be traffic generators, but really, is Q&A the next “big” thing?  If it is, that’s disappointing.  At least, I think it is.