Internet service for facilitating delivery of inquiries and answers, and accounting for associated financial transactions

摘要

An internet service for facilitating delivery of inquiries and answers thereto, and accounting for financial transactions associated therewith includes means for (i) a user of the service to specify a geographic region of interest to the user, (ii) the user to broadcast an inquiry to a subscriber population, with the subscriber population being associated with the geographic region of interest to the user, (iii) means for the subscriber population to receive the inquiry from the user so that an evaluation may be made by the subscriber population of whether to answer the inquiry, (iv) means for the subscriber population desiring to answer the inquiry to advise the user of a value associated with their answers to be given to the user upon acceptance of the value by the user, (v) means for the user to view an answer selected by the user upon acceptance of the value by the user, and (vi) means for accounting for the value as a debit against an account of the user in the service and as a credit to an account of each one of the subscriber population giving an answer selected by the user.