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Comment by hnnewguy | Hacker News Reader

Funny thing, I visited Quora today, for the first time in a while. Years, maybe:

Googled something, Quora near top results, clicked link, "signup" nag screen, results blurred out, left page.

I guess I still don't get it. Curious to see what this will be about.

I rarely initialize my use of Quora by visiting the website - I have found immense value in the digest emails they send. They are a mix of things they know I'm explicitly interested in, and generally "interesting" things (presumably defined by popularity). Probably 90% of the time after receive a digest email, I open at least 2 or 3 of the links within.

I have tried visiting the site directly and am rarely able to find content as stimulating as the links they send in the digest emails.

I've never signed up to the site, but find this quite interesting. Does that mean you only consume the content via email or do you click through? Sounds like a massive headache for Quora in the first case.

You really have to visit the site, the emails only contain snippets of conversation.

That being said, the emails are brilliant. I don't know how the content is selected, but almost every time I open one I see something eye-catching enough that I click through.

Yeah - I second that. Quora is one of the few sites that sends me weeklyish emails that I haven't unsubscribed from because the content is fantastic. I always seem to learn something from clicking through it.

It's kind of a bummer that they're needing to pivot and find a way to revenue - from a non-business, purely consumer perspective I find the site really enlightening and valuable.

Well not feeling the same. At first it was ok but now in the mails I get the 50 answer to "what are good advices for a good life?" And the nth reply on topic China by a user who regurgitates the western party line that I know already, in the same time and depth that you'd have in a newbie backpacker bar near the most spoiled tourist spot in Thailand.

Same here. 100% CTR, then end up spending ~30 minutes on the side. I would love to know how they put those emails together.

Like russell_h said, the email includes just a teaser snippet so you have to click through - and I've never encountered the BWoD (Blurry Wall of Death) after clicking through.

Agree about the digest emails. That's the only reason I go on Quora anymore but they have about 100% CTR for me.

That would mean you signed up and so have no restrictions. But they are knowledge base, does not matter how they got the information or who posts them. Asking to sign up to see content is like asking to sign up to see google results. Also their traffic through google must be higher that their traffic coming from YC crowd. So I cannot imagine why they would restrict their site like that.

I guess this will be interesting in light of yesterday's Founder Ethics post (http://ycombinator.com/founderethics/)

Are you suggesting that putting content behind a registration wall is somehow unethical?

I think some people find the apparent gaming of Google unethical. They seem to expose the content to Google but hide it from people who click through.

That might not be what's happening. It does give that impression though.

Putting my content behind a registration wall was pretty unethical, so I deleted my account and all my posts.

To remove that & avoid logging in / registering, just add "?share=1" to the end of the URL.

But most normal people won't know how to do this.

And the rest of us will forget 10 minutes from now.

I really don't understand why people give quora a free pass on this when expertsexchange was nuked by the rest of the online community for inventing these tactics.

EE moved stuff to the very bottom to get around it. but I agree, quora should get nuked from SERPs for this behavior. Despite having an account, it's a pain in the ass to login to see something with results blurred out.

There is a weird hivemind effect on display here and in other various Silicon Valley discussion circles where there is an unstated but very solid agreement that certain companies are "cool" and thus receive the most charitable interpretation of their plans and financial situations, but others which do essentially the same thing are run out of town on a rail, so to speak.

Take for example the story from today about Apple supposedly buying Beats. When the subject of Apple trying to compete in the music streaming space came up, everyone only talked about Spotify. Pandora, which has more than 3x the user base and is still growing? Not a mention. IHeartRadio, which was founded two years after Spotify and has more than double the number of paying subscribers that Spotify does? Never heard of them! It's as though Spotify is the only streaming music service that ever existed. In reality, they are near the lower end of the scale when it comes to customer traction, but they have mindshare on HN that is completely out of whack with that.

iHeartRadio is owned by Clear Channel and is advertised on their radio stations and billboards. My mother used to listen to a Clear Channel radio station and whenever I would listen with her, every other group of ads mentioned iHeartRadio back in like, 2010 and earlier. Before Spotify was available in the US, even. Now I see that said radio station has replaced all of their custom players to just redirect to iHeartRadio's streaming or music playlists.

That they have a lot of users by going that route is completely unsurprising. Not sure about paid, cause I'm pretty sure it's always been a free service so there is no paid subscription.

Clear Channel is also on such a different level from Spotify and Pandora right now that I'm quite sure that HN would start caring a lot more about iHeartRadio if it weren't owned by the 800 pound gorilla in the industry as opposed to the two startups. Only if iHeartRadio was owned by the record labels themselves could people care less, really.

With ExpertsExchange you had to pay money.

I actually like Quora's answers typically, but I always forget the share 'trick' to removing the blur, despite seeing it here numerous times. I won't actively use Quora because of the blur, I simply disagree with that tactic (and I think they're cheating when it comes to SEO (by presenting a different experience to visitors than they do Google's bots), and that Google is choosing not to punish it).

Off topic but every time I see ExpertsExchange not capitalized I almost do a double take. :)

And with Chrome soon hiding the urls, we will have hard time doing it too.

It's not hard you click the address or press ^L and it exposes the entire URL the only time it introduces more work is clicking in the start or middle of the URL instead of the end

Most normal people don't care about having to sign up. Or how Quora is allegedly gaming Google.

Actually, research by UIE shows that requiring registration is a great way to massively increase the website's bounce rate.

i avoid logging in / registering by avoiding quora. There's plenty of sites out there that don't engage in scummy growth tactics and try to harvest my personal information unnecessarily, i'll visit them instead.

I do this all the time, even though I actually have an account. I don't like the process where I search google and then have to login to see the result I searched for.

I've never liked Quora. I guess to each their own but they always seemed like the 9gag of Q&A to me. Maybe I just don't "get it".

AFAIK, there is a trick involving pasting a specific url after the Quora link that you are interested in to get past their sign up wall, but usually it's a waste of time.

I am curious to see what their pivot is, in the current form, I find the site to be incredibly annoying.

Technically they are spamming the hell out of googles results, but google seems to be fine with it

Agreed. Though now there's something even worse in my google results that makes me even more annoyed: wiki.answers.com. It's pretty much like being treated like an idiot child.

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