Mahalo the human powered search engine recently began a new service called Mahalo Answers. Answers has the basic functionality of all Q&A services, but adds an interesting element. Answers allows the person asking questions to pay for the best answer. This allows people to generate revenue by answering questions, while generating higher quality answers much faster than other Q&A services.

I was very skeptical of this idea in the past mainly because there are so many players in the market. With that in mind, I sent Jason Calacanis a quick email. I asked him why Answers was better than other Q&A sites and why would people would actually pay for this when you can get it free elsewhere. I also asked if Answers would be making deals to work with other players in the answers game. Specifically, I asked "Have you thought about any partnerships deals with facebook, myspace, linkedIn etc. ?".
His Reply
"we will integrate with those services shortly..."

Based on this response I expect to see Mahalo Answers spreading rapidly through out the Q&A market. It's really hard to say just where and when. I would expect the power players to be the first place Answers go. Facebook seems like an excellent fit, as well linked in, and I doubt google will want to play but they really should.
All of my other questions were answered in one form or another. Jason sent out the following tweet "STATS: Top user on Mahalo Answers has done 26,538 page views, answered 894 questions, 233 best answers, made $321--stunning!!! :-)"  That is really impressive and a really good reason to use Mahalo Answers.  All other questions I had were answered in episode 180 of twit.

All this good press that Jason generated  has me sold.  I am poor. So, I am going to go answer some questions.