Google did not take 10 years to become the leader in search, I think it took less than 1 year, but where it is today is due to the creation of many other products under the Google brand.

What Mahalo has to do is continue it's steady growth to become the leader in small user-generated advice pages. I believe this is the only area where Mahalo can make a difference and become a leader in with it's current model.

Answers and user-generated news pages (Mahalo's other areas) are covered by much bigger companies and they are doing it very well, but small sized advice pages are only covered by small companies and not very well.

Look at Mahalo's competition in those areas:
Squidoo, E-Zine, Knol, and 50 or so video-how-to sites.

If you ask me, these sites have had their fame and are now dwindling. Video sites do however pose a threat, but they are full of rubbish.

Unfortunately, from my experience, the quality of Mahalo advice pages are not very high either, but at least it is a little bit better than the rest so it has an advantage there.

If you want your work to make a difference to Mahalo, do LOTS OF PAGES. Build 100 pages. Don't worry about spending time advertising your one or two pages, just put that effort into making 100 pages and let the search engines find them automatically through the links around Mahalo.

But if you want your work to make a difference to the world or to the internet, consider putting it on a website that doesn't scare the readers with adverts. Adverts always make a site look cheap and make it seem like the quality of advice is low. This is why Wikipedia will NEVER have adverts.

Jason Calacanis has been talking about Mahalo's success in the coupon industry, so you should put all your efforts into the strongest part of Mahalo and start making more coupon spages!

As for providing a service that is NOT already provided, here's an idea...

A browser app that lets you notify a server when you find what you are looking for in a search engine. The app records your exact search query used in the search engine and the exact page URL where you found the answer/content and the string of text you've selected, AND the distance down the page, so that whenever you do a search in any search engine it will give you a popup saying "So and so who performed this search found what they were looking for on this page. Click here to go directly there."

How useful would that be!!

I think Mahalo Answers has the potential to be a killer service that rivals Google in usefulness, and maybe even in profitability.

The reason why is simple: A lot of the time when people use Google, what they really want is an answer to a question. When I Google the search term "wordpress squarespace", I am really trying to get an answer to my underlying question: Squarespace vs Wordpress - What are the pros and cons?

Now imagine what is currently happening out there in the world....

Many people have the same questions.... they Google.... they wade through a bunch of sites.... they draw conclusions.... they maybe take some actions based on those conclusions.

The same work is getting done a whole lot of times by different people. This is inefficient, and creates an economic opportunity as well as a social benefit, if a way could be found to avoid people having to repeat each other's work.

Imagine a second scenario....

A person wants to know the answer to a question... say the pros and cons of using Squarespace compared to Wordpress.... they ask on Mahalo.... they get a bunch of great answers based on personal experience and/or solid research... the Q&A gets indexed by Google... next time someone wants to know the answer to a similar question, Google finds the Mahalo answer, and that next person is saved a whole bunch of work.

Meanwhile, thanks to the new Mahalo rev share model, that orginal person that wanted to know the answer to that question can actually *make* money by asking on Mahalo, instead of doing the legwork themselves. And people that have found out the necessary info, perhaps because they'd previously researched that question for their own use, can make some money from that research by sharing what they had spent their time discovering.

The key to all this is to stop thinking of Mahalo as a search engine or a bunch of pages that get revenue. People don't want to search per se any more than they want ride on the subway per se. What they want is to get somewhere, and that somewhere is usually to find a great answer to a question they have in their mind.

Just as Bing tries to be not a search engine but a "decision engine", Mahalo should be thinking about being an "answers engine".

All the other stuff is good, but realise that what makes it good is it helps people to find the answers to questions they have. Whether the question is "What iPod should I buy?" or ""How do I get started with using Quickbooks?"

To get this thing to scale to the level of "the giants", Mahalo would need at least a couple of things....

- Absolute focus on ensuring questions get high-quality answers

- Get the marketing message out: "Don't search... ask!".... "Don't Google... Mahalo!"... or more verbosely: "Don't spend half an hour researching it yourself on Google... ask on Mahalo, you'll get great answers and maybe even make some money in the process!"

A lot of things flow from those points. For example if you want absolute focus on getting great answers to questions, you want smart and capable people doing the answering. If you want smart people doing the answering, you'd better create incentives and an environment that is attractive to those kinds of people.

It may also be that Mahalo - like Google, YouTube and Facebook before it - should be thinking first "How do we build a really useful service that will attract lots of users?" and leave until much later the quesion "Ok, how do we turn a profit from this thing?"

Mahalo cannot provide a service that is not already provided. Search, answers, media, media with commentary, social networking, how to, web pages, writing for money, voting on content, building up a user points system, etc...have...all...been...done.

Can Mahalo do any one of these things better than its competitors?

No, it can't. I'm sorry. I know I disappointed you. Mahalo can't search as well as Google, it can't social network as well as Facebook, and it can't host videos as well as YouTube. What hope is there then?

What's the one thing that artificial intelligence, or machines, or computers, will never be able to process? That's right, there will never be a computer that can think like a human. Computers can't process...

MEANING

Why not? Because, there would have to be a symbol that represents meaning, and then, reaching that symbol, the computer would look for a symbol that represents the symbol of meaning and so on and so forth, to infinity. A computer cannot, and will not ever, process meaning. Even humans can't process meaning; they have to experience it or feel it to know it.

Mahalo can use its users to make the Internet more meaningful. If it's more meaningful, it will be inherently more useful. Mahaloians find cross references, pictures, other useful tidbits of knowledge on the basis of human meaning. Some of us do it very well, and our pages or answers get voted on to show it. We all help each other get better through comments or direct QC. We emulate those who do it better than us. We grow together and everyone learns as they're doing it. The best part is, is that the people who participate make money.

I may have more friends on Facebook, but I participate in much more meaningful discussions on Mahalo.

I can search for more things on Google, but every Mahalo search result is useful and meaningful.

I can write How Tos on other sites, but no one recognizes my work and helps me like my fellow Mahaloians.

I have to go to many other sites to get all these other services but nowhere else is it weaved together with humanity like Mahalo.

Keep being human, and our work will make a difference.

It took Google almost 10 years to be where it is right now... so for Mahalo, I'd say we should take one step at a time. :)

Mahalo is actually a great idea. It doesn't just provide quality pages for everyone, it also gives very helpful incentives to its members. This site has a huge potential. For just a few years, Mahalo has been more known throughout the globe. Its pages are more search-able, it provides quality pages and great answers. Compared to some of its competitors, say like Yahoo Answers, you'd see a huge difference between the answer you'll be getting here at Mahalo and there.

The secret is the monetary benefit. Because a user can earn through giving a great answer, users tends to give their best shot most of the time. It reflects on the quality of answers that people could get here. On tasks, unlike other sites Mahalo, gives out money too for a person to come up with an informative page. In return, they get good articles worthy enough to compete with other online encyclopedias and news sites as well.

What can Mahalo do to be one of the best site there is? This goal doesn't just rely on tha management... the future is also in the hands of us, the members of Mahalo. By providing quality answers, questions as well and well-researched pages, Mahalo will be among the giants in no time. :) I'm sure of that.

Still, every now and then, there would be sites like Mahalo... it would be the management's turn now to think of ways to be the first among it's competitors. The first could be thinking of ways to gain more people visiting the site and have more members. That's why they had thought of the anonymous questions. This would be great for non members so they can still ask questions and get answers even though they aren't members. Although right now, this is getting a number of issues, it still has advantages somehow.

The new feature regarding the revenue share in Mahalo Answers is a great idea too to get more users as well as keep the people who are already members. I haven't heard of a website giving too much benefits for its users. :)

So that's it... we users must work hard and the management have to think of ways to improve the site. In time, we will have a place beside the giants. :)

Mahalo could offer free and almost free email addresses.

People would come here every day and sometimes several times per day to check their email and this would mean more people would open an account.

If I could come here to check my email that would be the icing on the cake - for me. It breaks my heart when I have to go to another web site to check my mail.

This is a really good question. I feel that Mahalo is already doing almost everything it can to make itself known. The people here are working their butts off in order to make well-researched, legitimate pages that help people find what they are looking for.

The strange thing is, is that I never heard of this site until I joined it recently. I found it while I was on craigslist searching for jobs in Vegas. Why hadn't I heard of it before if Google puts it out there so much?

I think the answer is that Mahalo simply needs to keep putting out relevant pages to what people search for. But we're already doing that! To keep up with the ever-changing current events and interests of our society, we need to work even harder in creating Mahalo pages.

Really, we're doing the best we can. I think we could use even more feedback from our own community on individual pages and questions, letting our fellow writers know what can be done to improve what we already have. Other than that, I'd say we just need to keep doing tasks and putting as much of ourselves into this site as we can!

Craigslist is a great way to advertise the need for more workers, and if we get the word out about Mahalo, and the fact that really good money can be made here, many more people will be working for us and contributing to the value of this site. Plus, the more people who are a part of this community, the more people will know of us.

We'll get there soon, we just need to work together!

I've written for many web content sites, including Helium, Demand Studios, Constant Content, eHow, Suite101, and several other venues. I've found one major difference with Mahalo: I enjoy and look forward to creating content at Mahalo.

The folks have made the Mahalo functions fun. I feel like I'm creating something useful, rather than just churning out content to get paid. Yes, I do enjoy the money aspect. No, it doesn't pay anywhere near what I get for my regular job. I do it because it's fun.

If anything can be done to make Mahalo the leader in search, Jason Calcanis will find it. His forward reaching vision is what will make Mahalo a leader. From day one, Jason has said he is thinking not of how to compete with Google, but is thinking of what kind of search engine people will want in the future. I believe that Mahalo answers is the wave of the future. Letting people get definitive answers to their questions without having to read ten webpages to get it, is genius. The only drawback I see is the time factor in waiting for an answer. If the question has not already been asked, Mahalo answers will only draw people who have time to wait, or are willing to pay well for good answers.

In order to better Google, Mahalo will have to provide answers from within its own network, and quickly, which is what I think we're working toward with all the how-to and subject pages. Look at Wikipedia. People go to Wikipedia to search for information instead of Google. Look in the first five results in Google, and you'll usually find a Wikipedia page. With our pages, we not only provide other search results from other sites, but links to related information within our own site. If someone searching on Google hits on a few of our pages, they will start to come here to look for specific info on their topic, not a conventional search engine.

I believe that by continuing to fill the site with information (like Wikipedia), provide related search results (like any other major search engine) and providing direct answers to questions with sources (much better than wiki answers and Yahoo answers), Mahalo is combining the best of the web with the best of search to make a site unlike any other.

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it doesn't make you stick out in the crowd. Mahalo is aiming to stand out, not be Google 2.0