How is Mahalo Answers going to compete with Aardvark?
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M$4 Answers
a. Human curation. A HUGE problem with previous answers-type products is the giant amount of jokes / noise in the system. Mahalo filters this all out.
b. Money. Oddly enough, when there is a tip on a question and the Best Answerer is awarded cash, the answers tend to be a LOT better and longer.
c. Chat is the wrong forum for most questions. For 'quick hit' stuff, it's great: What is this? Where am I? But 80% of questions are more along the lines of "I think I may have tonsilitis. Anyone out there know what I should expect in terms of treatments, costs and pain?"
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M$
However, if we wanted to add this feature we could do it in about two days.... so, if they get any kind of traction in the market we'll add it. I doubt out user base wants it but now that we know about this product we'll definitely watch it closely!
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M$
No offense Jason but it's taken a dozen of us, mostly from Google and Yahoo and many with CS PhDs, a year to build Aardvark. I think you guys have an awesome product and that you're going about what you're doing in a thorough and innovative manner. But what we do is fairly different and hopefully complementary to the great content you're amassing on your site. Would love to send you an invite if you're interested in playing around with the product. -Max, Zoo Director at Aardvark (max at aardvarkteam DOT com)
And multiple people at that.
Give someone the offer of money and they'll do better stuff.
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
Because it's chat the answers don't appear to be saved for future retrieval.
They say the answers come from experts, but you'll never know because your just getting a reply from "Aardvark" who grabs quotes from who-knows-where- it says that it "users technology" to find the best person to answer your question, what if that person isn't available on the chat at the exact moment you ask? I dunno, I haven't tried it yet because it's not available to the public yet.
Also, Mahalo is more community oriented, aardvark might be going in the direction that "Google Answers" went in where they only have a hands on team of experts rather then an open forum?
But again, I haven't used it I'm just grabbing this information from what I see on their homepage.
Also, Mahalo provides monetary incentives to those who help others here.
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
That sounds reasonable but then why does Mahalo allow Twitter and why is it thinking about Iphones?