The Spread of HQ Trivia
Source: http://fortune.com/2017/11/22/hq-trivia-app/
HQ Trivia is a new app for the iPhone that allows users to compete against others across the world for money. The app gives a series of 12 questions, presented by a host through live-streamed video, which users answer as the crowd slowly gets narrowed down to the final group. All the users that make it to the end without answering a questions wrongly get an even share of the pool of money offered in the beginning.
Another student already used triadic closure to explain the spread of the app so I will look at it from a different angle. First, we can look at it in the same way we’d look at a market like phones. When phones were first introduced, the more people that had them the more useful they were to potential buyers, as more owners meant more people you could call. In the case of HQ, it is not exactly the same, but we can adapt it to this model. Consider how the app started off: it offered only $100 pools to be split among the winners. Now, as the app has grown, it can offer pools worth amounts in the thousands. Why? This is likely because the more people using the app, the more it becomes worthwhile to advertisers and collaborators looking to reach a large audience. Thus, as more people use the app, more funds become available for the pools offered to users and the more money users have a chance to win (in fact, the app plans to reach pools up to $1,000,000).
Similarly, getting your friends involved can mean the app is more useful to you in chances of winning. Imagine you are the only one of your friends playing, this means once you lose, you no longer have access to the pool. Imagine instead you play with your friends. Essentially, playing with your friends is like having a better chance of winning: first, you have more heads collaborating to reach answers to questions. Second, if no one knows the answer, you can each select different answers, such that one friend will definitely win and the group as a whole can continue on in the game. In this sense, the more friends you can round up to play with you, the higher your chances are of winning the game (you just have to be okay with splitting the winnings with the group!).
Finally, and perhaps not so based in fact, playing with groups may just be more enjoyable for you. Maybe being able to get your friends together once or twice a day to play a fast paced trivia game is worthwhile to you and if you had been playing alone, you would’ve stopped. This may not be based in chances of winning or the amount of winnings, but it can definitely be considered in your utility of the app. More friends means more fun and you have incentive to create a group to play with, thus spreading the app to your friends. Indeed, all of these can combine together to explain why the HQ Trivia app has become so widespread, especially through social networks.