Everyone has a price. HowMutch wants to know yours

Many sites devoted to Q&A exist on the internet, Quora and Formspring for example, while others are incorporating Q&A features into their existing site, see: Facebook.

Quora is a site I truly enjoy for its ability to provide swift answers by experts in a particular field to all types of questions.  Moreover, Quora is rapidly evolving into much more than a simple question and answer platform, enhancing its appeal even further.

HowMutch, a recently launched site can be described as a Q&A service, but when you explore its depths one realizes it is so much more with the potential to be just as huge in the future as it is addictive right now.  Much of the potential of HowMutch lies not only in the site’s features as presently constructed, but the tremendous team behind it.

The site’s chief architects have impressive credentials.  The team features: Ari J. Greenberg (CEO and Co-Founder) founder Baveo.com, with experience at Magnify.net and theU.com, Jay Oh (VP of Technology and Co-Founder),  is the Co-Founder of Qwiki.com and the CTO of theU.com, and Gabriel Baldinucci (Director and Co-Founder) a former VP at Virgin Group (Sir Richard Branson’s Venture Arm).

With that background, how does HowMutch work and why is HowMutch different from other Q&A sites?

To the former.  Begin by signing up.  Upon doing so, you are asked a series of questions, the goal being to determine the price that you would pay, or alternatively, would have to be paid for both tangible and intangible items and scenarios. Here are some sample questions:

•    How much would someone have to pay you to streak naked at the Super?

•       How much would someone have to pay you to lick a subway pole?

There are dozens of other questions, but I find the one’s above quite humourous and interesting.  After answering each question, the user is immediately provided with stats about the question including: the median price, the percent of users who answered higher and lower than they did, and most importantly, their friends’ answers.

Fun and addictive.  Take my word for it.

The real value in HowMutch however, is how it differs from other Q&A sites by where it plans on going next. According to HowMutch:

“In addition to answering questions on the site, users can also ask their own questions to see how they compare with both their friends and the general population. In the near future, HowMutch plans to also provide brands and service providers with similar functionality so that they can gather data to determine the optimal price for new products and services.”

That’s right, brands and service providers will ask for your input on optimal prices for products and services.  Of this feature Greenberg says the following in an interview with TechCrunch:

“Charging brands for their own questions is the business model. We’re thinking that questions from brands won’t make up more than 10% of the questions on the site. We’ll probably mark them as ‘Partner Questions’ and in addition, we may offer rewards such as, cash, Facebook credits, or unique product samples to users who answer these brand questions.”

HowMutch in its present form is unique and with the future of the site bringing brands and services into the fold, it will be interesting to see how questions from HowMutch’s partners are phrased.  Will they take the form of a general question to protect product secrecy, will companies come right out with it, showing you the product and then asking for your opinion on price, or will it be a mixture of both?  I suspect the latter.

Despite how the site evolves, HowMutch is grand.  Give it a try and let us know what you like, dislike, or anything else you want to throw our way in the form of feedback with respect to HowMutch.