What Makes Question and Answer Sites Popular? - Playing for Pay, or Just Playing
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Part of what inspired this article was Mahalo's approach to a question and answer site. Google, you may recall, let users pay bounties for well-researched answers to their queries – anywhere from $2 to $200. Google retained 25% of the researcher's reward, plus fifty cents per question. If a user was really satisfied with the answer they received, they could leave a tip of up to $100. Questions could only be answered by Google-cleared researchers, who were not Google employees, but contractors.
I mention this because Mahalo has a “money system” of sorts. When you register, you get 50 Mahalo points. Asking questions cost nothing. Answering questions or choosing best answers for questions earns you points; you get more points for answering questions within an hour of their being posted.
So far, so good; but questioners can offer, and answerers can receive, tips. This is handled through PayPal. Tips come in the form of “Mahalo bucks.” When you've received at least $40 worth of Mahalo bucks, you can opt to receive payment via PayPal, and you'll get $0.75 on the dollar (Mahalo bucks are apparently worth 75 cents of US currency). The site explains the details of tipping.
Even with the monetary incentive, users shouldn't expect to make much money here. Calacanis himself is the top poster, and he has only earned 44 Mahalo bucks in tips. Of course, he may be deliberately staying away from the questions that award tips to play fair, but even other high scorers haven't matched his total.
When you add any kind of incentive, monetary or otherwise, answering questions can become quite addicting. I speak as a writer who is used to being on a deadline! Perhaps it IS human nature, but it's hard not to answer a question, even from a stranger (or maybe especially from a stranger) when you think you know the answer. And perhaps there's something flattering about being asked for your input on something, even across something as “anonymous” as a social site revolving around questions and answers.
Next: So What Have We Learned? >>
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