I played 'HQ.' It was fun. It'll be gone in six months.

Today, a bunch of us cool folks here played that hip new, live phone trivia game HQ. As a big trivia guy (and regular champion), I enjoyed myself. As a realist, I don't think it'll be around for too long.

HQ is an app that you can download on your iPhone (no quiz for you Android users). Then, twice a day on weekdays and once on weekends, it will notify you to join a live-hosted trivia game where you compete with many thousands of people to win real money.

It's simple. It's intuitive. It's mildly charming. And it doesn't stand a chance.

It's an extremely futuristic service that seamlessly connects people and creates a sense of community over something as basic as a trivia game. I was greatly appreciative of the thoughtful questions that seemed neither too hard nor too easy and the hosting (by "Quiz Daddy" Scott) went down pretty well.

However, it has a number of things working against it.

There are these things called fads?

You can always count on a large mob of people to get bored of something. And that's doubly true of the internet.

Though HQ's users have skyrocketed in the past few months, you can see that same trajectory in any number of fast-rising applications or experiences that died quick, quiet deaths. Friendster, Meerkat, Yo!, Peach, Ello, Secret, Yik Yak are all apps that had a lot of buzz, gathered a big user base, and fell hard.

I don't doubt that HQ can hold on for maybe a year. But it still has no discernable revenue stream, and is giving away $2,000 a day ($1,000 on weekends), not including server costs, talent costs, overhead, etc. We wrote that they have a few million in venture capital funding, which gives the team a limited window to make this thing succeed.

They could prove me wrong, but the short attention span of the internet is a real thing.

Not the stablest of ownership

HQ entered the consciousness of many people a few weeks ago, and not in the way the game's owners would have preferred.

The Daily Beast's Taylor Lorenz attempted to do a profile of the game's main host, Scott. What she got was a threat from HQ CEO Rus Yusupov that if she ran her previously recorded interview with Scott, the host would lose his job. In the wild post, Yusupov flew off the handle and came across as someone no one would want to work for.

Yusupov did apologize, but the damage was done.

Maybe it's just an isolated incident, or maybe it's a sign of bad leadership for a company walking on a tightrope.

It would be soooo easy to replicate (and to do much better)

Several of those apps listed above fell to competitors who were able to provide a much better experience, on a stabler platform, with an already competent business model that could provide a service with longevity.

HQ doesn't have a patent on a quiz game, and other big platforms (Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter) are almost certainly looking into how they could develop a more compelling product and disperse it across their enormous user bases.

And they could do so much more with the game: More access to the hosts, bigger prizes, microtransactions, user factions, avatars, etc.

Certainly, HQ is trying to future-proof its product and will probably evolve to keep its users. But that's a real balancing act for a fledgling company already suffering bad press and trying to keep fans with legendarily short attention spans.

I'm sure I'll play a few more times, gradually forget about HQ, and eventually delete the app. And I'm certain I won't be the only one.