Now let’s see how Masmic overcomes these limitations. Before coming to specific points, it’s important to note that these limitations could only be overcome through the application of micropayments and game theoretic incentive structure, and would have been difficult to overcome in Web 2.0 ecosystem.

Now talking about specific points:

i) On Masmic, only those questions can be posted with which some economic value can be attached, however small it might be as seen fit by question/bounty poster. It’s just that the questions can’t be posted for free. Although this would create a barrier for question posters, it would also increase signal-to-noise ratio, making the platform more lean and quality oriented. Also, attaching economic incentives will greatly increase the chances of getting good responses in a timely manner.

So, let’s say someone wants to watch a good documentary on Netflix and want good recommendations. Now, most of the users would search through the internet to find the answer and spend an hour on this. But some users who value their time can instead attach a small reward of say $0.5 to get the answer.

It is through the power of micropayments that this meagre amount of $0.5 can also be distributed among, for e.g., more than 50 contributors.

ii) On Masmic, those who contribute their knowledge/wisdom/creativity in the form of answers will get monetary rewards. As Masmic scales up, it will become a source of earning passive income for those who provide their valuable contributions on the platform.

The question poster assigns a definite number of rewards before posting it. In the above Netflix documentary question, let’s say the rewards assigned are 5. Now, game theory is utilized to ensure that the reward amount of $0.5 or whatever the poster chooses to assign is divided non-linearly among the winners. So, top contributor gets higher proportion as compared to 5th top contributor.

This will ensure healthy competition among the participants to fight for the top spot, once they choose to contribute to this question. With reward system based on meritocracy, content consumers on Masmic will also have quality content to consume even after the end of bounty duration assigned by question poster.

iii) Now comes the final question, who’s to ensure which is the overall top contribution and which is the 5th top contribution? This right can’t exclusively be given to the question poster because of misalignment of incentives and there’s a chance the question poster might favor one of his known ones.

This responsibility of sorting answers will be taken up by the whole community. But why would they spend their time in doing this? Because a portion of bounty is kept for and distributed to those who contribute in sorting.

But still you may ask, how does it ensure that the sorting is done in a rational manner? Because here again game theory is utilized in such a way that those who upvoted those answers which finally became the top answers will get higher rewards as compared to those who upvoted relatively bad answers. Wisdom of the crowd facilitated through game theoretic monetary incentive structure will ensure that a participant will act rationally while sorting.