Mahalo Q&A Pays Cash For Answers

Human-powered search engine Mahalo is launching a new Q&A feature on Monday to compete with sites such as WikiAnswers and Yahoo Answers.

However, Mahalo’s offering aims to create a profitable marketplace for such knowledge.

When users submit a question, they are able to offer a "tip" via PayPal to the person who provides the best answer.  The idea is that the financial reward will serve as an incentive for accurate and timely responses.

The new service will use a point system to rate members, as well as Mahalo dollars each worth 75 cents in real dollars.  Users who accumulate $40 Mahalo dollars can cash them in, and Mahalo will issue a check, minus the 25 percent the company keeps for itself.

When a question closes, Mahalo will shift it into an ad-supported archive for additional revenue. 

The company will jump start the system by distributing several hundred thousand Mahalo dollars to current members and beta testers.

Google’s Q&A site, now defunct, permitted users to ask questions and pay for answers. However, that service involved only a select group of professionals conducting the research, and it often took too long to generate answers.

"It became a very slow boring process, it didn’t have that sort of fun game system to it," Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis told ABCNews.

"And it was high risk."

"Here people compete to give you the best answer," he said.

Mahalo’s site has potential to appeal to many would-be professional "answerers", those who would continuously track the site for new opportunities to offer their responses.  Additionally, the user rankings feature, along with the fact that users control who ultimately gets compensated, should minimize the potential for spam.

The rating system will also prevent people from abusing the system by offering responses and never following through with a payment. Users have only four days to either select an answer or request a refund.  Otherwise, users vote on which question was the best. If a question receives no answers, their money is automatically refunded.

Calacanis expects questions to be a mix of factual requests and opinions, and direct questions to specific people are also allowed.  However, the company discourages questions from those seeking serious financial, health or legal advice. 

Since the system supports multimedia, answers can also come in via video, and Twitter integration means it’s possible for users to encourage their followers to respond. 

It’s an interesting business model:  if so many are already asking questions, why not include a financial incentive?   If successful, it could become a revenue model for the microblogging service.

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