It doesn’t happen that often anymore that we get excited about apps, but finally there is one more you wish you had invented yourself: HQ.
HQ app
In short, HQ is a trivia quiz, with a live broadcast twice a day. It is an American app and the broadcast times are therefore American. In the Netherlands you can watch and play at night at 9 p.m. or 3 a.m. Anyone can enter for free, and if they answer all the questions correctly, they’ll win a share of the prize pool.
HQ is a show that lasts about fifteen minutes at a time, created by the people behind defunct Vine. That was a popular social network for videos of up to six seconds.
Trivia quiz
In HQ, questions are asked via a live video. Presenter Scott Rogowsky talks the show together. He does this with a lot of humor, hip beats and visual effects.
The questions are multiple choice and are getting more difficult. As a candidate, you only have a few seconds to select an answer. There is hardly any time to look up something. If you are wrong, then you are done. Ultimately, there are often not many people left. The prize pool (usually $ 1000) is divided among them. Free money for smart people or those with a lot of luck.
Win real money
That prize money comes from venture capital from the makers of HQ. In the future, the company wants to work with sponsors. Super smart, because in the meantime the number of users continues to increase. If an advertiser made a bag of money available right now, some 120,000 players would see it every night.
HQ can be linked to a PayPal account. If you have played together an amount of more than 20 dollars, it will automatically be transferred to your account.
Noise
The app has been available for a while, but this week suddenly there was a lot to do. Rus Yusupov, CEO of HQ, had threatened to fire host Scott Rogowsky if The Daily Beast published an interview with him.
That wrote The Daily Beast in a bizarre article. Even if it were only about Rogowsky’s personal life, he would get fired from HQ. Later Yusupov denied that he had threatened to resign. In the end, it worked out very well for HQ, because the article brought the app to the attention of many people.
Maybe the idea of ​​a trivia game doesn’t really interest you. But give it a try. You will receive a notification just before the broadcast starts. When you open the app, you will see the reactions in the chat shoot by very quickly. The number of players also shoots up at a rapid pace, usually above 100K.
Savage questions
After the countdown, comedian and presenter Scott Rogowsky appears and the quiz begins. After a question in which many people lose weight at the same time, he names that question with a 3d effect as ‘Savage Question’. Many drop out immediately when they are out, but the show itself is fun (and interesting) enough to watch it. Although you can play along in the Netherlands, the questions are sometimes a little too focused on American users. Some luck is then required. Ultimately, HQ could focus on the global market or on different countries.
The app is completely free to download and you play for free. So try it out yourself. We finally got the feeling that we were seeing something completely new when we played HQ. It will be interesting to see how popular the app will eventually become.
→ Download HQ in the App Store (free)