Quora Co-Founders Share Numbers, The Secret Of Surviving The Hype Cycle

Sadly, the closest thing to the 'numbers' promised in the headline are D'Angelo's GPA and the magnitude-free claim that traffic has been "breaking record after record".

It would be nice to know real details: are their 'boards' taking off? What are more demographic details on the newer users? What's the rate of change or new record levels?

I believe the larger-than-just-Q&A theme of Quora is still: moderating and surfacing reliable information, against the backdrop of an increasingly polluted and adversarial open web. While it's sad that's necessary, it's a big and important enough opportunity to justify their (prior and rumored) valuations.

Where are the numbers? Who's upvoting this stuff? Here's a more fitting title: "Sarah fondly speaks on random Quora factoids overheard in a bar."

It's quite ironic really, that the article sneers over 'hype' and proceeds to do, unabashedly, just the same. I think Quora is a good product, it did not get the stickiness it deserved, and they tried well by adding features that brought in some sticky bits.

The article is completely elusive on the numbers, and mostly claims provided to a journalist that ate it up without question. As Steve Jobs once said, 'If you sell a lot of something, you'd want to tell the whole world about it'. Using this hype to fuel a better-than-you valuation created out of thin air is sad. Hardly relates to the noble cause that Quora is purportedly after.

"It’s less about Reed Hastings answering your questions — he has too much to lose by being blunt. It’s more about a guy from Netflix answering them. The everyday people that actually create the products, sites, and movies we love. The previously nameless and faceless parts of the machine that know where all the bodies are buried and are just “unimportant” enough to be honest."

This is the section that most resonated with me, and describes why Quora can be so powerful and valuable. It reminds me of an answer that has 828 upvotes, "What's it like to play on the same basketball team as Jeremy Lin?" -In it, a former Harvard teammate gives intimate, candid insights on observing a great player before the world had any clue he was great (though UConn eventually did).

The UX of Quora encourages this type of ask and answering: where long-tail bits of curiosity can be met with long-tail flashes of idiosyncratic insight. It's the best thing about it.

But, as with many kinds of truly valuable, deep insight into something, I'm myself curious how far and wide it 'scales' as a business or industry. Perhaps they are creating what financial-types call "optionality", with a diversified reach at lot of little bits of insight, any number of which might be hugely popular at any time.

Either way, I'm glad Quora is there for this. On the other hand I do very much believe that online Q&A is still quite nascent in its ability to help people not just learn, but achieve, produce, and collaborate on both deeply value-creating endeavors as well as the daily block-and-tackling of our work and personal lives.

Alexa seems to show that they've moved up about 165 Alexa ranks to be the 775th most popular site on the Internet, and their users use the site for an average of 3 minutes. Looking at the trend it looks like they're just a bit past a early-2011 peak and have been steadily improving for 6 months after a slump.

It's true that their rank appears to have mildly improved, though 'surge' is an exaggeration.