As an employee of Mahalo, I think Mahalo Answers presents an opportunity to cut through the noise that other question and answers services get bogged down in. The unique features like multimedia embedding make the product stand out and make it more interactive, which is more interesting to the question answerer and more helpful for the question asker.

I hope you enjoy poking around the site!
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I think Mahalo answers is an intriguing addition to the site -- it's much more interactive than our other pages, and can be very addictive to visit. Whether people need an answer because they want feedback on a question, don't know where to begin their research, or just don't have time to do the legwork, our service can help. And I like the fact that tips will compensate answerers for their hard work and contributions.

FYI, I'm also a Mahalo employee.
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Browse through Answers for a few minutes, and before you know it a half hour has passed. It's easy to get sucked in, particularly with the ability to post videos and images. During the testing phase as I was trying to think of intriguing things to ask, I ended up asking several questions about things I genuinely desired information on. I very quickly received answers that were both helpful and insightful.
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I think that the Multimedia aspect is really what separates Mahalo Answers from all of the other Answers products that are currently available. The ability to embed videos, photos and even MP3s directly on answers creates exponentially more valuable content and context. Instead of just being able to tell someone the answer, you can show it to them, have them watch a video about, or listen to it.

What would be even cooler would be if, in the future, users could ask their questions directly over video. Maybe in the next iteration users with a webcam can just ask questions directly into their cameras.
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there are many reasons to love Mahalo answers: ability to add photos, videos, MP3s, to ask questions directly, and I'm sure for some it would be ability to earn some money - however the most appealing reason for me is the sense of community.

...and it looks good :)
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'Mahalo Answers' is FANTASTIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It is easy to use and very accessible. (See Links below).
It is FUN!!!!!! No way, you say? YES WAY!
It's all free, you can share ideas with great people and earn real money too!
It's like Surfing the web by yourself on a beautiful day......BUT THEN....

You are the Star in a show full of Friends
You have help to do all kinds of things like find Employment
You can Be_Cool , share some Jokes (suitable for the workplace of course), learn, share, and help Mahalo become the best place on the Net!
You feel like anything is possible now - like you can reach the Stars !!!!

Mahalo! (thanks in Hawaiian) and ENJOY! :)

LINKS (you can click on them above also)

Surfing
http://www.mahalo.comSurfing

Employment
http://www.mahalo.comEmployment

Friends show
http://www.mahalo.comFriends">http://www.mahalo.comFriends

Be cool movie
http://www.mahalo.comBe_Cool

Jokes
http://www.mahalo.comJokes">http://www.mahalo.comJokes

Mahalo
http://www.mahalo.com

Stars
http://www.mahalo.comStars

EASY CONNECTING WITH YOUR MAHALO COMMUNITY:

Instructions: How to make Mahalo your home page
http://www.mahalo.comHow_To_Make_Mahalo_Your_Homepage">http://www.mahalo.comHow_To_Make_Mahalo_Your_Homepage

Instructions How to add Mahalo to your search bar
http://www.mahalo.comHow_To_Add_Mahalo_To_Your_Search_Bar">http://www.mahalo.comHow_To_Add_Mahalo_To_Your_Search_Bar

Instructions How to share more by helping build your Mahalo search engine
http://www.mahalo.comCategory:Mahalo_Social_To_Do">http://www.mahalo.comCategory:Mahalo_Social_To_Do
Source(s):
http://www.mahalo.com/Surfing
http://www.mahalo.com/Friends
http://www.mahalo.com/Be_Cool
http://www.mahalo.com/Employment
http://www.mahalo.com/Jokes
http://www.mahalo
http://www.mahalo.com/Stars
http://www.mahalo.com/How_To_Make_Mahalo_Your_Homepage
http://www.mahalo.com/How_To_Add_Mahalo_To_Your_Search_Bar
http://www.mahalo.com/Category:Mahalo_Social_To_Do

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I am so excited for Mahalo Answers! I think this has the potential to be huge.
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I think it's pretty interesting its crowd sourcing with the added incentive of money at the end.It does work as i use twitter once a day if at all, but here i have already answered 3 questions.Speaks for itself.
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It needs an RSS feed for listing filtered questions (one for undecided, one for tip, one for popular).
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I like the concept. The site seems to have underestimated the bandwidth required to make the site function. I've received six 503 errors in the past 15 minutes.

One such error happened while submitting an answer. The
submission hung unexpectedly, with a spinning icon next to the button which simply said "Submitting Answer". Firebug diagnosed the connection problem, and I recovered manually. Such errors should be handled more gracefully.
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I think it could wipe the landscape clean of yahoo answers with it's video support. I also think it should add RSS feeds of your questions AND answers - my biggest complaint on yahoo answers.
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I'm not sure what it provides that Yahoo! answers doesn't. I don't like how there is no politics section (I didn't see one) and no business section. If it's there, it's not easy to find. When you click on the categories you get reset to the top of the page and have to scroll back down to see what categories are sub categories. Very annoying.
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Mahalo Answers is interesting and exiting as it allows similar functionality to the popular Yahoo Answers but also pays your for answering questions.

Mahalo gives an interesting initiative to users to want to answer more and more questions because you can earn money from answering.

I found that there was not so many questions waiting to be answered and even less with tips. Perhaps this is because it is new and still in Beta testing. I am sure people will join quick and fast.

Payment is also very good because it inspires people to answer properly and not give one or two word answers like they would on a site like Yahoo Answers. Users a rewarded for giving full and proper answers.

Mahalo is amazing and I am sure it will just get better :)
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I think Mahalo Answers is a great service, but it will definitely be interesting to see how it differentiates itself from the market. It is very similar to Yahoo Answers, and historically copycat sites do not experience success in the long term. That being said I would not be surprised if Jason Calacanis had some surprises up his sleeve to enhance the service. The one major problem I see with the site is that there are both paid and free questions. The paid questions are clearly going to get a lot more answers, and it could potentially get to the point where the free questions are largely ignored. Nonetheless it should be interesting to see how Mahalo Answers does, and I definitely wish Jason the best of luck with this new service.
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Google tried the same type of service: http://answers.google.com/answers and it died. If Google cant create a stable pay for answers service I think it's only a matter of time before this goes under. Google couldn't compete with Yahoo Answers free service. Why would people want to pay to ask a question when they can either A. do a little extra research on search engines or B. go to Yahoo Answers and ask the question for free? It's only a matter of time before this goes under.
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Mahalo is an innovative approach to traditional Q&A forums because it puts more responsibility on individuals to self-monitor, research, and edit their responses, and rewards them for their efforts. Other Q&A sites such as Yahoo Answers and Wiki Answers offer free advice, but tend to solicit more skewered, “stream of thought” type responses. The financial incentives not only encourage more valid and reliable answers, but tend to follow the open-source information sharing that has recently emerged among computer programming, giving birth to the most innovative and collaborative solutions that only result of community, rather than individual participation.
Source(s):
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/AheadoftheCurve/Story?id=6464889&page=...

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