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Quora begins making money with the introduction of advertising

techcrunch.com

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Re: Quora begins making money with the introduction of advertising

#31

Post by wrsh07 »

mettamage wrote: post #25

I read the comments, some were a bit negative side about Quora introducing advertizing, others were quite positive about Quora itself and then a thought occurred. I haven't read it as explicitly as I'm about to say, but you know what the most popular startups and companies are really disrupting? Advertizing Google, Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Stackoverflow (a lot more niche though) are all making money with advertizing…

It's a bit more than just advertising, though. Facebook and Google both run ad networks. Both publishers [other websites] and advertisers can turn to either [or both] for their advertising needs.

This is also why Snapchat has a billion dollar valuation [see how many views they send Buzzfeed http://www.businessinsider.com/buzzfeed-gets-21-of-its-traff...]

Re: Quora begins making money with the introduction of advertising

#32

Post by eric_h »

mettamage wrote: post #25

I read the comments, some were a bit negative side about Quora introducing advertizing, others were quite positive about Quora itself and then a thought occurred. I haven't read it as explicitly as I'm about to say, but you know what the most popular startups and companies are really disrupting? Advertizing Google, Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Stackoverflow (a lot more niche though) are all making money with advertizing…

>Google, Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Stackoverflow (a lot more niche though) are all making money with advertising.

Having spoken with some people who work at stack exchange in NYC, my understanding is that it's the jobs site that is their biggest revenue bet, not advertising.

Re: Quora begins making money with the introduction of advertising

#33

Post by amelius »

titzer wrote: post #30

Quora has always given me a creepy feeling of a walled garden for information that has no business being in a walled garden. Facebook locks up social graphs, events between friends, relationships, birthdays? NBD imho. But trying to corner a knowledge market in a closed way is a really anti-web kind of thing to do.

Then how do you feel about Stackoverflow?

Re: Quora begins making money with the introduction of advertising

#34

Post by sevensor »

nilkn wrote: post #23

I actually like Quora a lot. I see that it gets a lot of hate on HN and I've never felt it was wholly deserved. I understand Quora had some hostile practices in the past towards users and has made some bad decisions at times, and I've even spoken against their login policy here on more than one occasion, but I have to say that I'm still fond of the overall product and experience. It's exceptionally polished and it ce…

I agree, in that I enjoy the experience, and that it offers something Stack Exchange doesn't. Stack exchange does its level best to eliminate questions whose answers are matters of personal opinion. Quora's whole product is personal opinion.

Re: Quora begins making money with the introduction of advertising

#35

Post by johnloeber »

amelius wrote: post #33
titzer wrote: post #30

Quora has always given me a creepy feeling of a walled garden for information that has no business being in a walled garden. Facebook locks up social graphs, events between friends, relationships, birthdays? NBD imho. But trying to corner a knowledge market in a closed way is a really anti-web kind of thing to do.

Then how do you feel about Stackoverflow?

StackOverflow and the StackExchange network are completely free to read and accessible without a login. The SE sites don't require anything but an e-mail to sign up and allow you to participate pseudonymously. When using the SE sites, the feeling of it being a community effort is a fairly clear one, I think.

Quora, by its nature of focusing on the real-world reputation of its users, is much more aggressive regarding personal information, and does not feel like a community effort to the same extent (you can't edit other people's answers, etc.).

Re: Quora begins making money with the introduction of advertising

#36

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

wrsh07 wrote: post #29
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #11

Quora's problems today are a direct result of what made them popular: celebrity. They made a great big splash when the media genuflected to the idea that "You can ask a question about Facebook, and Mark Zuckerberg could answer! " So regardless of the question or answer there will always be dominance by celebrities and their celebrators gleefully upvoting anything they post regardless of underlying fact. I prefer Stac…

It would make for an interesting network to analyze, though. Because you could essentially decrease the weight of successive "similar" votes [eg if two people who are fans of the same celebrities vote, their votes could be discounted slightly]. In this way, Quora could try to use a sophisticated voting system to suss out the best answer.

Voting is an inefficient way to find the truth. And weighting votes against celebrity posts is just punishing success.

I think Stack Exchange does this best with the ability to edit answers, but at the very least people who disagree should be able to state their case without being pushed to the bottom of the thread.

Re: Quora begins making money with the introduction of advertising

#37

Post by Udik »

What totally pisses me off about Quora is their real name policy. I am blessed with a fairly rare name- surname combination, and I definitely don't want to give to anybody with google and a couple of hours of spare time the chance to build a complete record of my (possibly ever changing) interests, opinions and life anecdotes. Also the reason I use facebook as little as possible - never, basically. I just can't believe how others can be so fond of carving in stone and committing to eternity the result of their idle time and their fleeting thoughts about anything from food to politics to world peace, all carefully labelled and tagged for later retrieval and collection.

Re: Quora begins making money with the introduction of advertising

#38

Post by borplk »

Ah changing the world here we go.

A lot of Quora answers look like this nowadays:

  By Johnny Johnson - Chief Ninja Growth Hacker at SaaS HQ

  Disclaimer: I work at hip SaaS business.

  { fluff about how there are multiple choices and everyone is friends with each other }

  { pitch, keyword SEO and links }

  { pretend you are oh so genuine }

Re: Quora begins making money with the introduction of advertising

#39

Post by datawrangler »

ctack wrote: post #19
spectrum1234 wrote: post #10

Good. Quora is a great website. It was only a matter of time and this looks like a decent way to do it.

I'm sure it's amazing, although I could never bring myself to sign-in. It always seems too "click-baitey". Sort of like "we have the answer but you have to sign in to get it". So I've always just let them have their answer and gone elsewhere.

If you're on Chrome, there's this plugin to deal with the sign-in prompt: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/block-quora-login-...
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