Quora Plans To Expand Beyond Q&A | Hacker News Reader

Quora Plans To Expand Beyond Q&A

techcrunch.com

28 pointsnileshd28 comments

> Quora's mission is to share and grow the world's knowledge

By hiding that knowledge from everyone who doesn't sign up or log in with Facebook/Twitter? Sorry, but I'll be celebrating the day Quora dies, hopefully at the hands of StackExchange.

When Experts Exchange does this, everyone loathes and ridicules this, but some how Quora is better? It is the same tactic. For a time I found the community on Quora enjoyable, but the site is aimless, demands too much like real names, makes it too difficult to delete and manage your content. Quora comes from the school of Facebook and its product is the content others have created, and its users. Whatever the outcome, I doubt users will see a happy ending in their use of Quora.

I think you're vehemently agreeing with Irregardless.

I agree Quora's answer-hiding is bad, so I share your grudge [1]. But that problem doesn't blind me to their other strengths. A focus on shared peeves may generate highly-upvoted comments but doesn't make for balanced analysis.

[1] http://www.quora.com/Internet-History/What-was-it-like-to-br...

Stackexchange and quora are totally different. You dont really go on Quora to ask about that crazy bug in ur code.

Stack Overflow is about programming; Stack Exchange is a network of sites using a shared platform for all sorts of niche Q&A: math, startups, RPGs, home improvement, etc.

Exactly. Other than the tight-knit tech circle referred by sites like TechCrunch, who in the "world" reads Quora?

It's an extremely niche site that has walled off all its content. Contrast that with Wikipedia, an extremely open site dedicated to sharing and growing the world's knowledge.

Quora will be gone as soon as the money runs out.

LOL. Quora is such a Crunch-whore. I swear, the only people who know of it or use it are Arrington junkies. Why is this still a "hot" startup? It's just Yahoo! answers with VC and less illiterates.

"Just?" Quora's still 'hot' enough to talk about because it's like Yahoo Answers, with VC and fewer illiterates.

Being like Yahoo Answers isn't so bad: Q&A is a strong category/mechanism, always drawing attention and triggering interactions with useful byproducts. Reliable information (with or without authorial personality) is evergreen on the web, and the big funding indicates a level of resourcing and longevity. Just fix the issues with Yahoo Answers and you'd have a big winner.

I dunno. Hasn't About.com kinda been like this for 10 years? Sure it's still around, but does anyone go to About.com on purpose? It's just articles specifically crafted to be Google bait.

I find that these q/a sites aren't sticky enough to make money. You don't browse Y!A looking for answers to random questions. You come there from Google, read the top answer, try it if you can, then leave the site.

At least Yahoo! stuff comes up in Google. Quora is locked behind its wall of logins. And, srsly, what's the end goal here, advertising revenue? Brand research? Do I really need to pay Quora to tell me people have trouble figuring out the directions on my hair care product? How much $$ have they taken so far? For what'll end up being just another ad platform? The quality of answers will degrade over time, just as the quality of any community degrades with size.

Why, look at Reddit. It's a steaming pile of shit these days. Even the pedophiles on 4chan left 4chan to go to Reddit! Consequently, 4chan is actually a nice place to have a discussion, if you ignore the interspersed racism and anti-semitism. Those things are far worse on Reddit right now...

> I swear, the only people who know of it or use it are Arrington junkies.

Reading that was such a coming-of-age moment for me. In having me realize that HN is not the place I always thought of it as: of adults so much smarter than me, who hold nuanced take on things and discussed issues thoughtfully.

No, Quora is not full of 'Arrington junkies' -- or whatever else you want to call it to feel superior over another part of the web. Questions answered, and answers questioned are often so full of insight that I just very often browse around to pass time. It's like reading an interesting book.

I thought the description 'Jimmy Wales’ site serves as an objective reference guide for the world, while Quora offers subjective answers to popular questions.' was quite fitting -- Quora serves its purpose quite well, and I do think it can comfortably grow and evolve into its newly stated goal of becoming a platform for users to publish their writings on. Tone down the knee-jerk cynicism please.

Notably, also, if you want Jimmy Wales to answer a question, it's easier on Quora.

LOL. OK, simple question: Do your parents know what Quora is? Do they know what Wikipedia is? Quora is unknown outside of the valley. Is there some switch they're going to hit to open the flood gates into this site, and suddenly overnight the entire country know what it is? Honestly, I don't know anyone outside of the valley who's even heard of Quora.

fewer* illiterates

"South Korean Internet portal Naver (http://naver.com), illustrates the potential of Q&A sites. As of July, 2007, Naver handled 77% of internet searches originating inSouth Korea, dwarfing worldwide leaders Yahoo! (4.4%) and Google (1.7%) [19]. One of the reasons for this disparity is the relatively small Korean language corpus available for crawling. To address this shortcoming, Naver built a Q&A site called Knowledge iN that encourages users to type questions for others to answer, rather than relying on search results [2]. Since their 2002 launch of Knowledge iN, Naver has accumulated 70 million questions and answers, and continues to receive over 40,000 questions and 110,000 answers per day [19]."

The source: http://bit.ly/12EHYUp

OK, but again, it's the only source of this info in South Korea. Here, we have a very robust Wikipedia, endless health sites (for those "How I get pregnant?!" Yahoo! Answers style questions, and an infinite array of other very chatty, very dedicated sites.

I just feel like this ship has sailed. Quora reminds me of Everything2. Remember that site? It's still around, but does anyone really use it much anymore? It's another attempt to put all the info in one big pile. I just don't see that type of effort working anymore outside of a Wikipedia setting.

Also, you know what else is huge in South Korea? Starcraft. But that hasn't helped Activision's stock too much in the States since the merger with Blizzard. South Korea also has insane bandwidth to yer home. I'd much rather investors emulated THAT success than some nebulous info site's.

While it might be counter intuitive, I think the best way for Quora to grow would be allowing reading without logging in. It doesn't even have to be as open as Stackoverflow where you can ask/answer without an account, I just want to read the answers. Maybe then, ironically, I'll sign up.

Yeah, in general the pattern for getting me to sign up for a site is something like this is:

1. Click links to a website that come up while searching for something or reading other sites 2. Notice that you are starting to see consistently good results from that particular site 3. Start to go there directly for content, and maybe even sign up & participate

For Quora this is what happens:

1. Click links to Quora that come up while searching for something or reading other sites 2. See the blurred text, immediately click the back button 3. Start to equate Quora links with this mini hassle, stop clicking on them

Maybe their content is fantastic, but it is very unlikely that I will sign up for a site of this type that can't prove that to me first.

You might be right, but it's hard to comment without even knowing what their business model is.

If, for example, they plan to generate revenue by selling leads based on individual's browsing histories, then they need view-only users to have accounts. In that hypothetical case, it wouldn't be terribly surprising if they found the expertsexchange model to be a good fit.

>> Quora and Wikipedia have long been seen as complementary <<

How is that true? I can't even search on quora without loging in.

>> Quora and Wikipedia have long been seen as complementary <<

That depends on who is looking ...

Yes, I thought that was an amazingly strange statement. I don't see how there is a connect between the two, especially when the vast majority if Wikipedia users would have no idea that Quora even exists.

    But Quora has had trouble continuing to grow, and has yet to 
    announce or implement monetization schemes. Broadening its 
    scope could help.

Profound.

The beginning of the end. Reminds me of how Foursquare, Airtime, Color, etc... have all been struggling amidst these crazy times.

The company would need to be sure the community is onboard, and even involve them in the development process - has it changed? when i was there it was very much us (most users) v them (the famous few + mods). in fact the division and general hierarchical approach was more or less a feature, i thought - diversity and inclusion meant dilution; elitism was going to drive the top content.

also, does d'angelo still look like that? surely it's been a while now since his voice broke?

Unless I've misread these companies, I don't quite think Medium and Quora are aiming for the same thing. Medium is more of a creative platform for storytellers (fiction) while Quora is more of a factual platform for information (non-fiction).

That's not to say Medium couldn't have non-fiction as well, just as bloggers could write about fiction and non-fiction on the same blog, though bloggers tend to stick with one format or the other within the same site.

Quora should have users post answers and then others respond with what the question should be. Jeopardy-style.

I think Quora's founders just need to take SEO seriously for a few weeks. Successful Q&A sites like Stackoverflow and Yahoo Answers rely on search engines for their traffic. Quora should embrace this and stop trying to be Facebook.

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