I have a q&a site with 4 million visitors a month - an ESL learning site. We have 2 employees, total cost <1 million :D - 1 million, even saying that makes me laugh. Completely coded by us from the ground up. This says <a href="https://siteanalytics.compete.com/quora.com/" rel="nofollow">https://siteanalytics.compete.com/quora.com/</a> they have only a million visitors a month??? - I'm guessing that must be wrong.<p>My question: What in pickled f*s are these people doing with 80 million on a Q&A site? How far out of the reach of reality is this industry?
Can someone explain how there a place for Quora? The only niche I can think of is generic technical advise.<p>Stackoverflow answers all the tech questions but they are overly pedantic to the point of ridiculous when it comes to generic tech questions.<p>Hackernews should have been the correct place for generic tech advise but we don't see questions of that nature here. May be as far as tech advise goes people from startups would rather write blog posts and get some credibility for their companies rather than contribute anonymously.<p>So how is Quora relevant or can be? On top of that they only show you one question. So that boggles my mind as to why it can become popular if its gated to begin with.
From personal experience, Quora started off really hot. Many influential tech people were answering very basic questions with highly impactful answers. It really was an honest look into how some great minds think. Peer voting really separated the noise and allowed smart contributors to rise up through the answers.<p>And then, the content got dry. It was the same questions with relatively similar answers. The newsfeed became more about showcasing content from months or even years ago to make it look more fresh. It really became a brand recognition and marketing tool to allow individuals to answer any industry-related question with their product/service/company in the context.<p>And then, posts came about. It made sense that authors would want to contribute their own insights without it being an answer to an already posed question. However, new sites like Medium, Svbtle, and Posthaven are much better tools for this although they each have their own content niche. Quora has become a redundant tool where people repost their blogs.<p>So where does that leave Quora? They have always had an issue going past the iron curtain of Silicon Valley. It's been difficult for them to engage the average, non-techie consumer. Even if they don't care about this demographic, it will be hard for them to sustain growth among techies. They must be quickly approaching a ceiling for unique users so then they must capitalize on engagement and retention. I'm curious how they decide to go about this.
Quora seems to have taken a strange turn recently - their email digest is full of creepy racial questions like "do white girls find Indian men disgusting?" and "do Asian men mind if Asian girls date white men?"<p>I guess you can't stop such questions being asked, but they frequently appear as the top question in the digest and thus in the subject line. I deregistered off the back of that. (Come to think of it, not sure exactly when I registered in the first place!)
Am I the only one that suspects Quora's future is more likely to be similar to an About.com (to be sold off for $300m in the future when a great business fails to materialize) than a Wikipedia? It seems like they latched on to the Q&A space originally when it was hot, and are now pivoting because competing with Answers.com et al. has a lot less of a runway than they previously expected.
>Founded in 2009 by former Facebook engineers, Quora is a revenue-less, question-and-answer service with 500,000 topics and an unknown number of users.<p>>Quora has now collected more than $140 million in funding from investors.<p>How could this possibly end well for the investors?<p>EDIT - besides a FB acquisition.
I didn't follow them for a while; but that's curious: what happened in the middle of 2013?<p><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/w68v2r2a3xq4c6c/%D0%A1%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%88%D0%BE%D1%82%202014-04-09%2018.36.44.png" rel="nofollow">https://www.dropbox.com/s/w68v2r2a3xq4c6c/%D0%A1%D0%BA%D1%80...</a>
Wasn't there some sort of issue where they were mining user data without our consent? Many of us were having to send emails directly to Quora support requesting that our accounts be deleted.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quora#Privacy_concerns" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quora#Privacy_concerns</a>
Jesus Christ Silicon Valley[1] did a beautiful breakdown of the lunacy of Quora a year ago.<p>JCSV's style isn't for everyone (much sarcasm, so profanity, very rude) but he/she makes some compelling points<p><pre><code> "Quora has raised $61 million dollars for this life-altering
question-and-answer-cum-blogging site. Let’s break that down
a bit: SpaceX, a company that sends rockets into motherfucking
space, has raised $230 million and employs more than 3000 people
(source: the world’s second-best source for knowledge). Quora,
which lets you ask other people questions on the computer, has
raised more than a quarter of that amount and employs 50
individuals."
</code></pre>
[1] <a href="http://jesuschristsiliconvalley.tumblr.com/post/48962035819/quoraquoraquora" rel="nofollow">http://jesuschristsiliconvalley.tumblr.com/post/48962035819/...</a>
My experience with Quora has been pretty bad, but that has mostly to do with my topic selection and network being Indian.<p>Quora got popular in India because of widespread adoption in IIT circles, who by virtue of being influencers spread it across India. So much so that, I saw a statistic which said that most visits on Quora are from India.<p>However for me what that has meant is that a rash of new registrants have appeared who have destroyed any topic related to my alma mater and India.<p>EDIT - Also shouldn't this 'Indian Invasion' have had an effect on the valuation?<p>EDIT - I am also an Indian and mean no disrespect. But the fact is that one of the side effects of Quora getting popular so fast is that it is often the first Internet forum for many students. I know it because I have talked to them. And that ends up in usual newbie mistakes.
My thoughts on the success of Quora are consistent with that of Joel Spolsky's take on cultural anthropology: <a href="http://vimeo.com/37309773" rel="nofollow">http://vimeo.com/37309773</a><p>Watch from 9:30 on. <i>"The idea of Stack Overflow is to attract anyone who is an expert programmer and repel anyone who's not"</i><p>My prediction - Google/Facebook (someone in that arena) will buy Quora.
My Quora experience has been a sad one. I created an account just to be able to see answers to a question I was interested in. Then I tried to delete my account and their account removal policy stated that you have to send them an email for them to delete your account. Really, who still does that in 2014.
What would happen if we valued forums the way we value tech sites? What would SomethingAwful's valuation be in today's tech world when it had the engagement and content creation power it held in the early 2000s ?<p>To me, Quora is really nothing more than a glorified forum.
Who the fuck cares?<p>Do your own startup, bootstrap it, answer to no one, feel the freedom to innovate as you see fit, eliminate the politics, remain true to your own calling. Fuck the VCs... fuck'm in the ass.