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Oh ye of little imagination. I go to Google Search, and I type in some phrase. The search results happen to not really have any great answers. And down at th
by VikingCoder 13y ago
Oh ye of little imagination.
I go to Google Search, and I type in some phrase. The search results happen to not really have any great answers. And down at the bottom of the page is this nice little link that says, "Can't find what you're looking for? Care to ask an Expert?" Out of curiosity, you click it, and it takes you to the Helpouts page.
If they allow people to set their price at $0, some people will just do it out of altruism / reputation. (Think of Stack Overflow karma and badges.)
I could picture Open Source projects using $0 Helpouts, to encourage use - in helping new users configure, in helping users solve problems, in helping developers contribute. It'd be like an IRC channel. Especially if we can invite multiple people to the Helpout, like we can with Hangouts.
I can see businesses using it, as a way to reach Customer Support, when another business or high-end consumer wants to ask a question that they're willing to pay for.
EDIT:
Picture this, "Carmack Thursdays." On Thursday evenings, John Carmack agrees to do $1000 Helpouts, and donates all of the proceeds to a charity of his choice.
Linus Torvalds, Bruce Schneier, Jim Carrey, Ron Paul doing fundraising for a campaign, Markus Persson, Jeff Atwood, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, James Lipton, Tyra Banks, Kevin Smith, Venture Capitalists like the Y-Combinator folks...
If they get the right people to do Helpouts, it could be huge.
Like a one-on-one Reddit Ask Me Anything, where you pay to get backstage passes.
- ngoel36 13y agohttps://clarity.fm/home https://clarity.fm/home
- VikingCoder 13y agoI'm sure I can find competitors for literally everything Google does. Google tends to do many of them better than their competition.
- Ecio78 13y agoYes, then the competitors are forced out of market and close their activities.. and then Google shut down the service.. and then new competitors launch replacement services and then...
- gcb0 13y agoSounds nice, but this will mostly become a phone sex service and everyone knows it. Like internet forums freed hookers from their pimps this will free camgirls from cam sites.
- tuananh 13y agoeverything with a camera can be come phone sex and cam sex now. Take a look at FaceTime.
- sachinag 13y agoActually, I'd wager otherwise. It'll be for psychics. Keen.com was this (voice only, all experts) back in the 90s. Ended up being entirely psychics.
- RyJones 13y agoso, Keen worked to model - it connected experts in getting money from people (psychics) with people having surplus money to get. In a less snarky vein, if that's what people want to pay for, perhaps enabling that market in an honest way is what people should do? I know a guy that funded his telecom startup by selling custom prompts for phone sex lines.
- bentcorner 13y agoFor a brief period of time you were able to gift other Xbox Live users Microsoft Points. It doesn't take much thinking to figure out why they pulled the feature shortly thereafter.
- bernardom 13y agoHow much would you pay to get an hour of consultation with a YC partner? (YC partners: what's your price?)
- buro9 13y agoAn hour seems excessive. You're far more likely to get to the point and get a focused answer if you get it down to 5-10 minutes.
- bernardom 13y agoFine! How much would you pay to pitch them? (It can be $X to their chosen charity if you wish)
- JonSkeptic 13y agoAfter the above comments about phone sex and prostitution I found this comment made me smile =) So how much would you pay for just 1 hour of 'consultation' with a YC partner?
- yesplorer 13y agoIt's not like "DownandAbout" is saying the project will fail. But Google is closing down projects because they want to focus. For the guys building driverless cars, Google Glass and computers without monitors, a project like this would easily pass as their weekend hack. I'm sure that's the problem. They aren't going to get 10,000,00 people a day trading skills and cash and that is where they will start preparing its' obituary
- VikingCoder 13y agoThey want to focus on what, though? I think that's the main problem that people are having - is they don't get what makes Google decide on what makes the cut and what doesn't. The decisions Google has made don't make sense to them, so they have nothing but fear. > They aren't going to get 10,000,00 people a day trading skills and cash If there's a $0 option, I'm not so sure you're right.
- yesplorer 13y agoand if they are going to rely on $0 to get them 10,000,000 users daily I'm not sure they will be making sense by putting the product out in the first place
- VikingCoder 13y agoHere's a free Expert with 2 stars, and a paid Expert with 5 stars. Depending on your question, ask whomever you want to. If they drive acceptance of the platform, they drive their revenue, as well.
- biturd 13y agoI tend to agree. There is already a massive affiliate marketing industry around http://fiverr.com http://fiverr.com where for $5 you can get a pretty amazing amount of high quality work done. Everyone is a specialist in their field. $5 Wordpress installs, plug-in's, custom code, logos, etc.