just buzz or here to stay?
The Q&A site Quora created a lot of buzz on international tech and social media blogs. I had a look at it to tell you if it’s worth your time. We hand out some Quora invites, so you can decide for yourself after reading. Quora is basically a question and answer service most people already know from the likes of Yahoo! Answers or Facebook Answers (where it’s available). People ask a question and other people who deem themselves knowledgeable answer it. On open services like Yahoo! answers the quality naturally suffers a bit as more and more people with a bloated perception of their knowledge throw in their two cent’s worth. To a certain degree you can determine the value of an answer by the comments or user evaluations it gets. So what’s the buzz about Quora?
That’s more or less how Quora works as well. They just added a few more layers of quality assurance to keep standards high. One is that in most countries the service still operates in invite-only mode. Being in mainland Europe I had to get an invite, which one of our Twitter followers kindly provided. Thanks again to Shelley and Andrew of Buy Our Honeymoon!
On first perception it has a nice and clean layout, presenting you questions from topics the person, who invited you, can suggest. On top is a big white field to enter search queries or questions. In the list of questions you see the headline and the top-voted answer, if there is one. Clicking on the question brings you to the question thread with an additional field for question details, which is quite a nice thing to have.
As user you can add your answer (only one per question), comment other answers, vote them up or down, thank or ‘blame’ someone for his contribution and suggest edits to both answers and the question itself. Interesting concept, as questions sometimes need to be refined or change their focus, following initial response. This is something I really like about the platform.
Talking about questions: As you enter your question in the search field, you get constant feedback wether your question has already been asked by another user. This is really clever as it reduces duplicate questions and displays other questions or topics, that may be relevant to you. Once you decided to ask the question (with the button, not enter) a fairly bossy question assistant analyses your question and suggests improvements (punctuation, phrasing, use of capitals, etc.). At first this is annoying like hell, but once you asked a few questions it gets better as you go along with the standards. I think this really helps starting relevant discussions.
All questions are organized into topics, you can choose to follow. Following a topic adds all current questions within it to your stream on the main page. As you can also follow people (which you naturally do) and questions the stream becomes convoluted quite fast. At this point I would prefer a right- or left hand navigation of the topics I follow to quickly access a filtered stream depending on my current interest. Another thing, which annoys me quite a bit is that while responder details are easily available, it’s really difficult to find out who asked the question.
The service is still fairly new and the platform developers are heavily involved in Quora topic discussions, so we can expect interface and navigation improvements not too far in the future. A more prevalent question is the actual value of the platform and why you should use it. One really big plus is the high quality of questions asked and answers given. During the short time I’ve been on the platform now I already took away some big chunks of worthy information about this or that. Part of that reason is the adoption of high-profile individuals like company CEO’s (e.g. Reed Hastings of Netflix) or leading developers.
With the currently high share of early adopters comes a natural focus on tech, design and social media topics. If you’re into one of these I can strongly recommend giving Quora a try. If it manages to keep quality high I’m sure it has strong potential to become a major player in this area of the web.
To give you an incentive we decided to hand out some invites for the curious. Just write in the comments why you are interested in using Quora and which topics you’re interested in. The 10 best answers receive an exclusive invite to Quora.
Make sure you correctly fill the Email field as we need that to invite you. Don’t worry, we won’t store this information and use it only to open the gates of Quora – that’s a promise!
„It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. “
Ralph Waldo Emerson
…the only way to build my own opinion on what Quora is and does, is by trying it out myself! I’m a curious person and believe that Quora could open unknown doors on new topics. One topic I am particularly interested in is cultures: what believes and customs people have around the world.
I would also contribute with some substancial and true content!
Please send me an invite.
thanks
Flo
On a few blogs (US) I heard about Quora, but in the Netherlands it is still unknown and I’m curious why everybody is so excited about Quora. I just have to try it myself and the company I work for.
Topics to be covered: document management, document capture, social media and many more.
Thanks,
Bob
Quora has the potential to dominate 2011. In a sense, it comes very close to the Google business model, in that it provides answers to questions.
That’s what many folks use (or at least partly use) the Internet for. The key will be simplicity of UI and quality of responses.
That will separate it from Yahoo! Answers and other such existing features. I will be keen to try this out.
Thanks for your insights, guys.
@Flo love the quote. ;)
@MindStrategist: Not sure if I would compare it to the Google model. Probably the biggest difference is automation to user curated knowledge. To ensure a high quality(which is highly important as you said) they can’t really open up as much as they would have to to become relevant on scale. For me it has the potential to become very relevant to a focussed audience. This is definitely a better way to success than trying to compete with the likes of Yahoo! Answers or Facebook, who operate on openness and scale because they have that built in.
I got interested in Quora after hearing so much about it from Silicon Valley blogs, it feels a bit too much honestly, but I would like to give it a try and determine whether its actually useful or just a big hype.
Thanks,
Adam
I’m not sure if I want to join Quora….
I mean, maybe it’s current value is the exclusivity of the participants, and their ensured and reputed background and skills.
What will happen when the rest of us join them? When anyone can answer questions? I’m not sure if they have enough quality-reputation-karma tools.
On the other hand, it looks like a pretty polished software and interface, kudos for their developers and UI designers.
The point is, that they’ve made me terribly interested in having a look by myself, so I’d love an invite to try and give my best to Quora community, hoping they will keep the quality as it is now.
Cheers!
Guillermo
So far I’m really impressed by the persons posting here. I think I’ll enjoy following you on Quora once you’re in. :)
@Guillermo: I think you could indeed add some value, especially in two aspects which come to mind instantly:
1. Healthcare topics
2. Discussions about Quora. As I see it from your background you’re operating a closed network yourself. This might be great for some interesting discussions on community management or how Quora compares to other networks of different or similar nature.
This is a small gripe, but why do we need a login for the quora site? Frustrated. Sorry made just having a bad day!
@curtains: I take that as an expression of the inner urge to get one from us. ;) The reasons why they require it appear to be quite manifold. You’ll have the chance to find out yourself once we sent the invite. ;)
I happend to browse to Quora website today and found it interesting. One thing that appealed to me was that the questions were articulate and intelligent. Other aspect that appealed to me was that the responses were to the questions were to the point. The responses do away with lot of internet clutter to arrive at what is being searched for….
Will I get a Invite or not is the Question?
Have a nice day!