Mahalo Answers, the just-launched Q&A service that is part Yahoo Answers, part Google Answers has just proven that people will actually pay for valuable information. At least, they will when strippers are involved.
This morning a representative for the The Stripper Method - a video series that invites viewers to watch “two former strippers, now housewives, business owners and mothers, as they teach secret stripper techniques for use at home with your significant others” - asked how they could book the video’s stars on a nationally broadcast TV show or radio show.
Mahalo member budgallant answered the call, offering a detailed guide to contacting local radio hosts, reaching Public Access Television, and, if all else failed, staging a protest (you can see the full answer here).
In return for his answer, the question’s originator (a user by the name of vegasundressed) has just awarded budgallant with $100 in Mahalo Dollars (the site’s virtual currency). Budgallant will now be able to exchange those Mahalo Dollars for real cash, less a 25% cut taken by Mahalo.
(Disclosure: Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis is our partner in the TechCrunch50 conference).
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Wow, Mahalo sure is getting a lot of ’screen time’
Seriously. As if TC’s ethics weren’t already questionable. Also, a 25% cut! That is straight ridiculous. No one is going to pay for what you can get on the internet for free. And if they do, well, they are probably just looking for press, as in this instance.
Seriously? I’d rather pay for good results than go slumming around through Yahoo Answers. I will never post any questions or answers there because I don’t want my reputation to be associated with the mass of idiots that infect that place.
Did the disclosure statement appear there as soon as this was published or only after you guys mentioned that.
If it was there initially I see no problems, obviously there’s going to be a bit of self-promotion of yourself and affiliates - every site, and business does it. It’s just business - it’s when they don’t disclose it that you have serious issues.
Thanks you mamalo
http://www.jugargame.com
Ironically, MAMALO means blow job in Spanish.
Edit: Thanks you mahalo
http://www.jugargame.com
TC, you disgust me with your blatant pimping of this POS service. How do we know if this is even legit? Stop kissing combover boy’s ass every other post.
Enough already.
I don’t believe people waste money for these silly answers.
I really dont get Mahalo’s business model or why they needed $25 Mil to effectively clone a service ?
Google, arguably the most powerful search engine in the world, couldn’t make this work - and they were paying big bucks to users to answer questions.
Yahoo has repeatedly tried to sell of Yahoo Answers - which now Mahalo directly competes with - and completely failed.
I just dont get how Calcanis can think he can “beat” by copying a model that is clearly design just to answer questions supported with ads.
More so, Google is introduced human edited results now and are probably already including sections of the results in search rankings. As they promote, encourage and expand this service - “human edited” system such as Mahalo just wont scale. Google will start getting high quality deep search rankings from human edited Google Accounts, in 100s of languages, and across billions of pages of content.
Instead of promoting something like this - how about you analyse the actual business model Mahalo are trying to put forward in a “impartial” way instead of offering some pimp arse post that makes me absolutely no smarter about the service offering.
Thomas,
Let me try and explain the model. I appreciate your skepticism… good journalism/blogging and commenting is about being skeptical after all.
Forget about how much money we raised–that’s not really important and is a function of, frankly, my ability to raise money, the size of the search market, and the team we’ve put together.
Let’s look at the details. We believe the future of search is based on three things:
1. curated, spam-free links (which we starting 18 months ago).
2. concise, fact-checked information (which we started 12 months ago).
3. questions and answers (which we started 48 hours ago).
Put simply our vision is: Search + Content + Q&A = Mahalo
or
Google + Wikipedia + Y! Answers = Mahalo
Now, you may not think Mahalo will scale, but people said that about Wikipedia and it is now one of the 10 largest sites in the world.
Mahalo will get to millions of pages in the next three to four years and those pages will be filled with a combination of content, hand-curated links, machine-indexed links (i.e. google), socially selected links (like delicious), and Q&A.
So, yes we’ve “copied” Yahoo Answers, but Yahoo copied Naver (http://kin.naver.com), and yes we’ve “copied” Google but they copied Lycos and AltaVista.
What is unique in what we are doing is building out pages with those three types of content–three services: search, content and a knowledge base.
Give us 2-3 more years and you’ll see our five million monthly uniques grow to 20 to 100m… if we keep up at this pace perhaps we’ll get their sooner.
Mahalo for the feedback!
Peace and love,
Jason
Jason, why do you pounce on every comment, post or article that mentions your name!?!
Mahalo was, is and forever will be a terrible idea that does nothing new. You should be commended briefly for conning investors into giving you more than $2.00 for the idea…and then you should be kicked in the nether regions immediatly after for wasting everyone’s time.
I don’t know you personally but I remember you on TWiT saying how you had your assistant buy 3 of whatever Steve Jobs held up over his shoulder (in that case, the Mac Book Air). Then you wrote that list about how to make employees stay longer for less by investing in a $3,000 coffee machine and other nonsense.
The tech world simply needs less of your kind. I’m all for new ideas…but ideas aren’t enough now. You gotta prove they’re going somewhere, unlike most techies did in the 90s when they promised the world and delivered a bubble.
My biggest concern is how easily Mahalo Answers can be gamed into yet another advertising medium. Look at the current example. A less cynical person might believe that the goal of “vegasundressed” was to genuinely solicit advice on how to garner PR for their “client”. However a more jaded and cynical person such as myself sees the post as a rather obvious attempt at direct promotion for the web site.
In other words Jason, I would suggest that this is an example of exactly what you might want to guard against. Posts of “questions” that are thinly veiled attempts to generate traffic. Just think of all the attention that this $100 question has garnered.
If that is your goal, to create yet another advertising venue then congrats you have obviously succeeded. However, if your intent for Answers is to provide a service comparable to those offered by Yahoo! and formerly by Google, then I think you may need to consider imposing editorial review for question submissions (similar to what you do for Mahalo Search).
Please note that I am not criticizing based upon the subject matter of the original post. I am a firm proponent of free speech. Rather, I am concerned that what you have created is going to turn into more of a Craigslist Personals section than a true research tool.
Just my two cents (and probably not worth your time reading or considering).
Good luck to you,
Kevin
Gotta love Jason’s answers - we’ll just copy the big 3 and see where we go.
Skimming 25% off the top that is one hell of a racket, amd sadly JC has people dupped into thinking he is actually doing them a favor by taking it. Are things so bad over there JC that you guys are now sucking your users dry? 25% off the top is a bit ridiculous isn’t it?
Kevin, I’m with you, the potential of this being used for nothing but advertising is there and is already happening. The post in question was just one of a few I spotted in the limited amount of time I was there.
Does the name “P.T. Barnum” mean anything to you?
Holy crap, get off the mahalo teet already!
Wow. This is the first time I’ve seen a follow-on post that basically said “yeah, holy shit– it actually worked the way they described it to us.” I’m waiting for the next one about a social network that successfully conncted members. Newsflash: Match.com gets hot chick a date! Shocking!
For the record, I’ve been finding Mahalo through searches on Google lately, and it’s actually my first preference. If I want information on a recent topic, they have it all sorted for me to digest without any effort. Yahoo Answers has been very helpful and I think this will take off just as well as it did, maybe with a better potential of monetization?
Thank Ankit, I think you get it. Mahalo is really great at breaking news, reference materials, how to articles and now answers any question in minutes with multiple great responses–even if you don’t pay!
The future of search is based on three things in our view:
1. curated, spam-free links (which we starting 18 months ago).
2. concise, fact-checked information (which we started 12 months ago).
3. questions and answers (which we started 48 hours ago).
Search + Content + Q&A = Mahalo
or
Google + Wikipedia + Y! Answers = Mahalo
At least that is the plan… it will take five years, but will prove our point (or die trying!).
all the best,
jason
How much are you paying TC to cover your product, a product which NO ONE in the real world cares about? Outside the few doltish, “Internet celebrity” worshipping clowns, does anyone actually use this failure for anything?
It’s a sad state of affairs when you take investor money, lay off staff, and continue to fly around the world going to worthless conferences where you dispense your laughable “advice” to budding entrepreneurs.
Actually, it’s sort of the other way around: the dotcom/Web 2.0 crowd *doesn’t* care about Mahalo.com but the public at large does!
Think about it for a second, the folks who are tech savvy are not the target audience for our service.
re: flying around the world:
1. I didn’t go to Paris last week and I was supposed to give a keynote!
2. When I fly around the world I’m talking to investors, partners, customers, journalist and the folks who might use the product. In fact, a large part of the inspiration for the virtual currency + knowledge base idea came from my trips to Korea and Japan.
I know it’s hard to understand the value of travel, but there is more to the world than what happens in the United States.
Since you’re probably going to have a problem reading a book, here’s a link to my Audible (ohhhhhh audible!) selection of the week from TWiT: The Post-American World.
http://www.audible.com/adbl/si.....Cookie=Yes
Seriously, listen to it and you’ll understand why any CEO at a tech company needs to travel outside the United States at least five times a year.
Most of our customers will NOT be from the United States in another 10 years.
Peace, love and unicorns… jcal
“Seriously, listen to it and you’ll understand why any CEO at a tech company needs to travel outside the United States at least five times a year. ”
Are you desperately trying to find ways of blowing through your investors’ money? Geez dude! What an idiotic thing to say…
“Well, You can’t be such and such if you don’t go overseas FIVE times a year!” BS! Where did you get “FIVE”!?! Like so much stuff you say you just pull it out of your butt.
And sorry, but no one outside of tech-savvy web nerds have heard or even tried Mahalo. Most did that initially because Veronica was on there and nerds like videos of nerdy girls. But your short-lived shot at any interest by the people who need to adopt something before it catches on w/ the mainstream users has come and gone.
Mahalo sucks. It’s like Cuil, only you have more money to blow through over the next couple of years.
Maybe your business plan in a few years is becoming a content supplier to Dogpile.com or something. I hear a lot of people use that.
It’s not an idiotic thing to say at all. He’s encouraging anyone who hopes to be successful in that chosen field to gain broader perspective by traveling to other markets. If I were a stockholder, I’d be encouraged that this CEO wasn’t content to stay hoarded-up with investor money that’s not being put to use.
Really, in the big picture, the cost of five trips overseas versus potentially MILLIONS of dollars in revenue is minuscule. Your comment is negative and insulting and doesn’t respect the fact that, whether you like the product or not, you’re addressing an individual who’s doing something with his life, quite successfully. And encouraging others to follow suit.
He’s the CEO of a successful tech company; chances are, he knows what he’s talking about. And he’s absolutely right about Wikipedia — I remember when no one heard about it, and then it caught fire with the public at large. Now you can’t escape it.
I wish Mahalo success.
hey, after seeing valleywag rip on mahalo answers today (see “is jason calcanis cool” on the site), i had to register - but i actually kind of like it! not too shabby, just too late to the game…feels like a nickelodeon quality tool with the cartoon style coloration and interface and so will never draw professional research community members, but hey, that’s not what they’re after..
thanks so much for checking our Mahalo Answers dave!!!
Truth be told we’ve got a core group of a couple of hundred researchers on there already. Most questions are getting answers in a couple of minutes and the quality is 100x that of Yahoo Answers or Wiki.Answers *already*.
We’re not too late to the party…. we’re starting the party!
Peace, love and unicorns (for everyone!),
jcal
I started using Mahalo earlier this year simply because the Plumeria is my favorite flower… I made it one of my homepage tabs in Internet Explorer, but then every time I went to close Internet Explorer it wouldn’t let me because some strange script was running on the Mahalo site that allowed it to scroll through news clips or something and it got really annoying so I killed it and haven’t been back since. You guys should fix that bug.
Don’t you have a company to run, instead of starting flame wars on tech crunch?
the quality is 100x that of Yahoo Answers or Wiki.Answers
How exactly do you measure that?
It’s their company and it’s a promotional blog .. so like sales call … except some exaggeration
by looking at each of the sites.
Go away. Seriously. Please go away.
what’s with all the new same ideas =) http://groups.im/
A User gets 100$ is not a big news, if many start earning same figure then you can make it a news
We would have actually paid a larger sum, but they limit you to $100 at the moment.
funny story…..stripper PR
I was one of the beta testers (got it from subscribing to Jason’s list) and I tried out the service.
Honestly, it’s not half-bad. It’s not 100% ready, but that’s the whole meaning of ‘beta’.
As for all the issues people bring up, you’re right. Mahalo’s going to be fighting an uphill battle if they intend to succeed. But just keep in mind that numerous other successful companies also faced similar scrutiny when they first started.
Give Mahalo a chance guys!
The site offers users a new way to connect with others and get fast answers to their questions. Very very important to non-tech-savvy folks.
Although, honestly, I just don’t like the design of the whole thing. It seems to childish, Jason. This should be more professional looking
hey guys I didn’t realise you did advertorials here. How much does it cost?
Actually, why not just cut the crap and put a Mahalo ad where a tech story should be.
This site has to roll out a certain number of stories a day. You can skip the ones you don’t like. I doubt your life will be affected that much if you just skip to the next story, which is usually rolled out within a few hours of the last one.
This is crap. TechCrunch is spiraling down fast! Nothing but a half-baked PR site at this point. Ridiculous “articles” about non-events that happen to promote Arrington’s friends and business partners.
有趣
http://uclue.com is MUCH better.
It is a paid answers service with Former Google Answers Researchers. Very pro.
haha I think thats a cool concept…
I would never have paid $100 for that answer. Looks completely set up to push PR for Mahalo.
They could have used that $100 and submitted a press release. A simple google of ‘getting on tv’ will give as much or more info as the best selected answer did.
Interesting, I wonder how the other Q&A services out there will react?
So it’s another variant of the free Q&A bunch. What I don’t understand is why so many people need to rip on it.
It’s not like Mahalo took your money away to do what they want. They raised the money, and it’s not your money to be saying if it’s wisely used or not. Heck, think about it, at least there are a few more people employed for now
But for the ultimate rippers, what is it that you have launched yourself that you need to scoff so publically here. How many people have “startup envy” here. If you dislike Mahalo (I am not fond of it either), at least it’s not harming you or taking away your time from your own startup.
I can’t comment on the frequency of this company appearing on TC, I am not in the know, that’s a different matter entirely and not for me to judge.
“My biggest concern is how easily Mahalo Answers can be gamed into yet another advertising medium.”
If people don’t like questions created soley for the purpose of building buzz, they can choose not to answer them. But human nature is to do things when there’s a reward at the end. Kevin, I bet you would eat your words and sign up and answer a question if the answer came with a 1 million dollar reward.
Although I only use Mahalo on an infrequent basis, I do find it useful for certain types of things. Mahalo Answers? Haven’t used it yet, but I’ve poked around… doesn’t look like something I’d use just yet, until I have a serious need. But for fuck’s sake, it’s only been live for what, a day or two? I guess I just like the idea that people (in many cases, people who got laid off recently) are still able to make a little extra scratch during these…. tough economic times (drink!).
Jason’s reasons for laying off Mahalo staff recently make sense from a business perspective (sucks from a personal perspective), but I honestly see Mahalo Answers as a win/win situation: people willing to pay for the answers they want get quality answers in short amount of time; people who answer questions earn money, and the better the answers the more the money; Mahalo gets a cut which means it creates an additional revenue stream for itself, meaning it’s more likely it’ll be able to keep its employees in the future (because it’ll have the money to pay them).
No need to kick a man (or a company) trying to help people earn a little extra dough. That’s all.
Good luck, Jason. Hope it works out for you.
Really who cares ? I am failing to see where the story is in this post. Are you also going to post about when someone pay 50$ a good answer on how not to get cheated at the used-car dealer ??
I too doubted the mahalo idea once I heard it on TWIT. However I now find myself drifting over to mahalo for prompt headlines and concise searches. I don’t really care about investors or Mr. Calacasis’s business model. But I have started using the site and it has treated me well.
Keep flaming him, bad press is as good or better than good coverage. He will be laughing all the way to the bank.
I remember about 5 or 6 years ago when a friend told about this new things called “wikipedia”. He told me about how its a website where anyone can put up information about something and anyone can add to or edit it. It will NEVER work was my reaction. If anyone can post and anyone can edit it then what stopping people from posting false information, or removing useful information? It’ll be chaos. And I was wrong, very wrong. Well, not so much in the early days of Wiki, but now its matured.
I see some very good things coming out of Mahalo, especially the QA section. Because what better way to get an answer about something then to give someone a few $’s. Obviously if you can google or wiki your answer its kind of pointless, but what if those options fail? You could spend hours searching through random websites trying to find something at all. Why not just save yourself the time and trouble and post a question, put up $5 for the best answer and give people some incentive.
I see businesses in a few years having to put a cap on how much they let employes spend on Mahalo Answers each week. Questions like “What software application will let us do ____ for our business”
Mahalo is one of those sites that ask you for your e-mail address PASSWORD as part of the sign up. Stay away from any service that asks you to violate a cardinal rule of personal security as if it was nothing.
The billion dollar question is “How do I..”
I’m the user who won the $100.
After reading the above posts I’m amazed by two things I see here:
1. The rabid contempt for the innovation being expressed, and the denial of reality relating to the emerging success of Mahalo Answers.
2. Jason’s display of tact and willingness to engage in discussion, that is so clearly unappreciated by the jealous trolls and flamers on this site. This, of course that is something so few people can understand, because it is so alien. That is his strength, not only as an entrepreneur but as a person, and it’s as admirable as it is practical.
It strikes me as curious how obscure bloggers on here, rather than recognizing the advancement Mahalo offers, and embracing it as a step in the right direction, feel the need to attack not only the site, but the staff behind it with silly personal slurs that demonstrate more about themselves than the targets of their rants.
Is there something about providing an opportunity for content providers to make money for their contributions, that you guys are ideologically opposed to? God forbid anyone be so audacious that they’d build a better and fairer system that might take some revenue away from the good old boys who have made a fortune off of their user base, while offering nothing but “free” hosting for the information they sell advertising space around.
The framework of Mahalo Answers is revolutionary, and it will succeed. It will also set the tone for services that follow. Comparing MA to Yahoo Answers, is like comparing a user manual to a tabloid magazine. The framework Yahoo provides creates a haven for trivial questions, and even more trivial answers, and offers no motivation to raise the bar. Mahalo is building something that has the very real possibility of becoming a useful freelance consulting network. I am embracing that possibility, and not because I received the largest tip the site has seen so far, but because I see the potential in Mahalo Answers, and I believe in the vision it represents.
What puzzles me is how the above troll mob actually believes it holds the majority opinion… It doesn’t. The (handful of) negative opinions here are completely out-of-touch with the public that this site is a platform for. There is wide appeal here, because something like this truly has not been done before, and the opportunities provided by the backing of this project to enable it to enter the mainstream, are being greatly undervalued by some of the above comments.
Like with any innovative idea, you have the naysayers who keep humming the same tune, until someone presses a different button on the jukebox, and all the while they think the music is only in their mind. It’s sort of the nature of things, and there’s countless hugely successful projects that faced the same kind of senseless ridicule at their inception.
It’s funny how when people are proven wrong, they suddenly suffer a memory lapse and claim they predicted success from the beginning. In that spirit, I’m sure those of us who have been enjoying the site are thankful for your support.
If you think you can make a better system, please do. I’ll be one of the first users you have, and I’ll come into your projects with the same open mind I came into Mahalo with. Rather than talking shit about the CEO, why don’t you out-CEO him? I think he can handle the competition.
The response to Mahola Answers has been overwhelmingly positive… I don’t know what beach the head-in-the-sand crowd is on, but those aren’t muffled waves you are hearing in the background. It’s the sound of everyone else hurrying past you in droves, to go for a swim. Come on in, the water is nice here.
If you are so devoted to Yahoo Answers that you don’t want to try something new, and would rather attack it than learn from it, that is your choice. If your participation is only to contribute the same type of trivial, worthless, insults to someone who builds a better system, feel free to say there, and contribute those equally useful answers, of the same caliber. I’m sure you’ll have some company over there, though I haven’t bothered climbing back aboard that failtrain myself in the last 3 years. Whoever thinks that Mahalo is an attempt at duplicating Yahoo Answers, is probably not just missing the point, but incapable of seeing it altogether. That system is broken. Trust me… I know. I used it regularly for some time. If you can’t see that it is broken, it’s because you’re the one breaking it!
To me, Mahalo Answers is about creating value. Those who offer the tips, demonstrate their value in the answer. Those who receive the tips are assured their contribution is, in fact, valuable. The portion allocated for Mahalo, demonstrates the community values the framework that sustains it. This creates a community built on reciprocity and respect, and this is the most important element, and will be perhaps the primary reason that Mahalo will be a success.
Note: I do not work for Mahalo. I do not know Jason Calacanis personally, and I have no vested interest in the success of the site, other than seeing the benefit of the unique opportunity it offers it users.
Great response.
I’m impressed that Jason took the time to comment here on the blog. Guess people are never happy. Either a company “isn’t in touch with the customer” or the company “is trying to hard to communicate with its users.”
Can’t make everyone happy, I guess.