Why the 3pm phone break? HQ of course

Have you spotted younger colleagues, children, students etc disappearing at 3pm to stare avidly into their phones lately and wondered what going on? Well, in case you were unaware there is a new app on the block and it's not a shoot em up. It's a quiz show called HQ Trivia. If you haven't heard of it or had a go I can promise you will soon. Think "Millionaire" on a global scale that lets you join in for a chance to win big bucks.

What is it?

Launched in August 2017 by the creators of Vine, HQ is a FREE quiz app (remember children, if its free you are the product) you can download for IOS and since December Android. HQ lets you take part in a global trivia quiz as part of an audience that is climbing massively each day. You turn up at 3 pm or 9pm, having been reminded to do so by a push notification and join the masses competing for that quiz's prize money.

How does it work?

The quiz takes the form of 12 questions, starting with the very easy and heading towards best guess territory. You have 10 seconds to select your answer from a multiple choice of 3 answers. If correct you continue on to the next question, get it wrong and you are out. One of the most addictive things about this game is that you can carry on watching to see if you would have got the next few right, very frustrating if you think you would have. You then continue through the game until if get the 12th question correct you either win or share the prize money on offer.

The gameshow (that's what it is) is hosted by a bouncy and slightly annoying host, the app uses live broadcast technology so you can see and hear the host. If your signal is not great then fear not the questions are written down and you select the answer by pressing a button. When you signal is bad you don't have to hear the presenter just watch the questions.The payout can be big but can also be tiny. The minimum win for a payout is $20 so if you have split the ￡550 pot with 40 people you won't see any winning until you win again.

What's really clever?

No, they haven't reinvented the quiz show, it sticks to the age-old formula of a series of questions that lead to a prize. What they have done is created a new channel to play on and built an audience that can be monetised.

The audience continues to grow so fast because you get an extra life for every person that uses your name when signing up. The extra life can be used at every level until the 12th question when it is void so you can't win by using it. Due to the numbers of participants winning the game have introduced a new version whereby the questions continue until there is only one person left. Extra lives fail to count after Q 15.

How does it make money?

This is the clever bit because it is so well backed the game has been able to grow its audience without the hindrance of advertising which users will find annoying. The prize money has been stumped up by the VC backers until now that is. With an audience of over 1 million per broadcast, it is a new and obvious platform from which to promote your wares. With advertisers looking for alternatives to Facebook for their advertising spend this is an obvious choice.

On March 28th the prize was a huge $250,000 sponsored by Warner Bros to promote their new film RReady Player One. On the 26th March Nike gave away Nike Air270s to every winner. You can see where this is going, the more the word gets out the bigger the audience, the bigger the prizes and on.

Remeber when "Who Wants to be Millionaire" was launched in 1999, it took the world by storm due to the prize on offer. Well think of that but with millions of participants all playing at once. This time it doesn't need big budget sets or highly paid hosts. You could run this thing from your living room (if you had the multi-million dollar tech of course. So look out at 3 pm today and see whom you can see playing.

My username is birdmanphoto in case you were wondering.