[Web4lib] Mahalo Answers - The latest commercial virtual reference wrinkle

Tue Dec 16 00:58:27 EST 2008

Bernie et al.,

    Its a little out of field, but out of curiosity I checked out
Mahalo and also read Jason's rationale for the service.  Actually, I
was mildly attracted to the issue because in the  Institute we are
planning collaborative problem solving and some open access to problem
solvers (researchers) are indeed among our interests.

    So... Mahalo is indeed a lot like Yahoo Answers and similar
offerings.  I followed a few threads that I happened to know something
about.  I was not impressed.  More importantly, I am not convinced
that the overall model is sustainable or should be, though I don't
have a crystal ball and it will be interesting to see what happens.

     As someone who does have some specialized knowledge in a few
areas I have some problems with all these kinds of services.  On the
one hand I do understand and have personally indulged the natural
human inclination in most of us to be helpful in ways which reflect
our personal expertise.  On the other hand, what I find is that a
reward structure like the one Jason has set up does not work well to
encourage really professional input from people who have salable
expertise.

    Allow me to illustrate by referring to another real-world service
in which professional researchers are involved and the rewards can be
very large indeed.  I am referring to Innocentive -- the most notable
of about five services which broadcast problems posted by entities
with a strong financial or mission incentive to a (hopefully large)
group of registered "solvers" -- usually people with PhD's often
gainfully employed in their field.  The terminology used involves
describing these requests for solutions as "challenge grants" as if to
associate these with funded research -- with the twist that only
useable results are actually paid for instead of serious intellectual
effort being funded with the understanding that in many cases desired
results are not guaranteed.

   The above process is sometimes called "crowd sourcing" (analagous
to outsourcing), but the Innocentive folks bristle at that term.  They
would bristle more at the term I use for this process -- I call it
lottery funding.  What really happens is dramatized by the actual
statistics.  A typical challenge grant is $15,000 or more -- with some
numbers in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Already sounds like
a lottery doesn't it?  Well, the "solver" pool is ostensibly now in
the 100's of thousands -- with, interestingly enough, the majority of
solvers located in places like India and China.   So what really
happens is that a company risks NOTHING putting a value on a
"challenge grant" that seems large on the scale of someone's hourly
rate, but small in terms of what the in-house cost of solving the
problem might be.  So, maybe thousands of highly trained and skilled
people might jump in to compete, but only one will be judged the
victor -- kind of like Mahalo only with more zeros.  Somebody wins the
lottery -- everybody else loses.

   I have been watching Innocentive because I was once challenged to
distinguish it as a would-be competitor to some of the services which
the Institute will offer.  I discovered that despite seemingly large
listing and processing fees, Innocentive was not making a lot of
money.  I realized as well that the challengers made out like bandits,
but that the average return to "solvers," just like in a lottery, was
abysmal.  The house always wins on average in casinos, but here the
house always wins period.  The lottery gamblers have an abysmal
average compensation for their efforts -- which are often
considerable.  So what I predicted is that (a) Innocentive-like
"challenge grants" will never replace other forms of research funding
to become dominant in general and (b) the drop-out rate of
professional researchers from the process will be very large indeed.

    Back to Mahalo.... Okay, so why would I spend 10-20 minutes of my
precious and highly valued time delivering my personal expertise to
some guy who needs the input, but who might just as easily award my $4
in compensation to somebody who seems nice or whose answer, though
less precise, is somehow more satisfying.  I'd have to be crazy.

   This is not to say that I wouldn't deliver to some deserving
non-commercial knowledge seeker a tid-bit which I am confident I have
unique knowldege of just to be nice and get some publicity (or not,
depending on the asker's needs).

   So what I imagine will happen to Mahalo -- whatever its
compensation scheme -- is that real expertise will rarely appear, but
that folks with time on their hands and willing to do some research
will do largely for fun or neighborliness.  This could be just fine if
you are asking for a restaurant recommendation, but not so fine to
solve a really important problem.  For that matter, the Internet is
full of specialized interest sites where people with shared problem
domains help each other.  I have used and contributed to these (mostly
used) with some degree of satisfaction, but the rewards to all have
been mutual growth in knowledge not tiny and iffy financial rewards.

   I could go on, but the bottom line is that Mahalo is most likely to
go the way of Yahoo answers and become a nonserious outlet for
questions and answers and that very few people with serious expertise
will participate as contributors.  Who really needs this and how does
anyone really make a living doing it?

   Lastly, would somebody PLEASE explain to me WHY any librarian would
WANT to spend their time answering questions in this manner?   I can
imagine some answers, but I'd really want to hear from librarians why
they are either worried or enamored of this.  Maybe I am missing
something important -- would not be the first time<g>!

On 12/15/08, B.G. Sloan <bgsloan2 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>  Mahalo.com has introduced Mahalo Answers. It's sort of like Google Answers and Yahoo! Answers, and all the other earlier web-based services that have attempted to fill the same Q&A niche that library virtual reference services could be filling:
>
>  http://www.mahalo.com/answers
>
>  If you can't figure out exactly what Mahalo Answers is trying to do when you go to the above URL, there is hope. Jason Calcanis (Mahalo's CEO) has done a "why-we-did-this" entry for his blog:
>
>  http://calacanis.com/2008/12/15/why-we-built-mahalo-answers/
>
>  Bernie Sloan
>  Sora Associates
>  Bloomington, IN
>
>
>
>
>
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>

-- 
Steven E. Patamia, Ph.D., J.D.
Personal Cell: (352) 219-6592