Quora begins making money with the introduction of advertising

They made a great big splash when the media genuflected to the idea that "You can ask a question about Facebook, and Mark Zuckerberg could answer!" So regardless of the question or answer there will always be dominance by celebrities and their celebrators gleefully upvoting anything they post regardless of underlying fact.

I prefer Stack Exchange. The site is less about being the best person to answer and more about the answer itself. There is far less correlation the number of fans a given user has to their number of up votes and likeliness to be accepted by OP as correct or most helpful. I find real discussion occurs when we lose our preoccupations with who we are and focus on the subject matter instead.

I see others are mentioning Stack Exchange, but I think the two communities are entirely different. Stack Exchange is good when you have a very precise question which likely has a very precise answer and can easily be categorized into a very precise topic. If any of those three conditions fails, you're more likely to just meet hostility there than to get an enjoyable discussion.

A lot of Quora answers look like this nowadays:

  By Johnny Johnson - Chief Ninja Growth Hacker at SaaS HQ

  Disclaimer: I work at hip SaaS business.

  { fluff about how there are multiple choices and everyone is friends with each other }

  { pitch, keyword SEO and links }

  { pretend you are oh so genuine }

Why?

https://www.quora.com/Why-doesnt-Quora-sell-its-product-to-o...

But there wouldn't be much loss if it closed

Answers on Quora are really good its the Question quality that bothers me. Its like people ask for things just for the sake of asking.

I'd like to see page views from logged-in members and number of active users instead of general hits. I think that would give us a more honest picture of its uptake. Anyone have that information?

Adam D'Angelo has to be one of the smartest people I've ever met, and there is a lot of very interesting content on Quora; I rarely read just one Q/A thread when I end up on the site.

As compared to a site that mostly shows friends pictures of people's lunch, I propose it provides useful and useable content, and is an interesting service.

Interested in knowing the ratio of questions:answers coming from Indian users.

[1] http://newslines.org/blog/why-quora-joined-y-combinator/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo

"What is it like to get 1600 on SAT?", "What it is like to make a million trading?","I am making $200k a year, should I buy a Porsche?", "What are best life changing habits of winners?". "What is it like to be born in a billionare family?"

Those are all real questions or very similar to real questions on Quora. For some reason Quora thinks these are the type of questions I want to read the answers to. I am a sucker for responding sometimes while cringing.

These are the type of questions I might have asked when I was 17 and maybe that is the answer to who is asking them.

Advertizing

Google, Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Stackoverflow (a lot more niche though) are all making money with advertizing.

It's perhaps not the only way they make money, but it is always one of the first revenue sources they have, or the first even.

I'm inclined to believe that a big chunk of the web app startups out there are about the same thing.

Nuances are welcome :)

Everyone good on Quora is going to get "Church'd" soon enough. The moderators have done everything they can to drive out quality. The ban of Michael O. Church (who was a moderate, thoughtful member of that community, regardless of his divisive presence here) convinced me of that.

I also find it interesting that any Indian or Chinese woman with feminist views that would be considered moderate in the U.S. gets reported as a sock puppet and banned.