No. Facebook already has enough of my data inside its walled garden. It's not getting control of my logins to other services. Add another signup method and I'll give your site due consideration.
Show HN: Review my startup: Quora, a topic based question and answer site
31–40 of 44 posts
Re: Show HN: Review my startup: Quora, a topic based question and answer site
#32I like it, seems very cohesive and simple. May I ask how do you got people making questions and answer them ? I ask this, because I'm also creating a startup that will need user input in order to grow, so I'm trying to get some tips from others.
Re: Show HN: Review my startup: Quora, a topic based question and answer site
#33* Misc.:
- Don't like using my Facebook account.
* UI:
- Always find myself hunting for the "follow" button.
- Front page is a visually undifferentiated mishmash of 20ish different questions, most of which contain no more than a few sentences of content. Also: do we really need number of answers, number of topics, follow, star, time, topics (selected arbitrarily?), profile picture, answer snippet, answerer name, answerer description, and answer votes for every single one of these questions? You're making me sort through way too much stuff to decide whether I'm interested in the question or not.
- The options menu is cryptic and poorly located. Ex.: If I want to answer something anonymously, why do I go hunting at the right-hand side of the screen by all the navigational / related links stuff? Put that by the text box.
* Community:
- The personality types on the site are not substantially different from people I already know. Most of the questions (both from my feed and via "All Questions") drip Silicon Valley techie. I'd love to see intelligent questions/answers from people who have lives very different from mine. As things stand, I'm not sure whether, if I were to ask a question, I'd be getting a range of opinions or an echo chamber.
- Answers tend pithy. On the other hand, some of the questions encourage that. Is there some way to see only questions/answers with meat?
Summary: Right now I feel like Quora has a lot of features (too many features) and not enough content, even in what look to be active topics. I don't know how you get people to invest in writing high-quality answers, but that's the question you really need to be focusing on. I would say that you should try to to cultivate a sense of sitewide community, but the siloing of the site into a bunch of semi-intersecting topics could make that tricky.
But then, the only Q&A site I've ever really liked has been Ask Metafilter, so maybe I'm looking for the wrong thing here -- but I don't think so, since, for me, it's the first site that comes to mind when I think of your mission. (Put together a better-indexed version of Ask Metafilter and you'll have a winner in my book.) If I need to ask a short question that can be answered quickly, I'll consider Quora. If I'm looking for significant thought, longer meditations, a diverse range of opinions, or interesting browsing material, though, I'll head elsewhere.
Re: Show HN: Review my startup: Quora, a topic based question and answer site
#34I like it, seems very cohesive and simple. May I ask how do you got people making questions and answer them ? I ask this, because I'm also creating a startup that will need user input in order to grow, so I'm trying to get some tips from others.
Re: Show HN: Review my startup: Quora, a topic based question and answer site
#35Why did Google Checkout fail? http://www.quora.com/q/Why_did_Google_Checkout_fail What are some good reasons to take a technology company public? http://www.quora.com/q/What_are_some_good_reasons_to_take_a_... How did Mint acquire 1.5m+ users without a high viral coefficient, scalable SEO strategy, or paid customer acquisition channel? http://www.quora.com/q/How_did_Mint_acquire_1_5m_users_witho... Are most Y Combina…
There are some major identity issues here. Are you a social network? Why am I getting notifications of people following me, which now I must clear, on a site I'm going to for answers on something specific? These social network tactics were fine for Facebook, but people are over it. You need to deliver meaningful relevant content, not spam users with meangless e-mail to attempt to get them to revisit the site.
Way too much Facebook in your Quora, so to speak.
DOES THIS SEEMS REASONABLE:
Send me an email on:
Question-related
Someone answers a question I'm following
Someone edits a question I'm following
Someone edits details of a question I'm following
Someone adds a topic to a question I'm following
Someone removes a topic from a question I'm following
Someone comments on questions I'm following
Someone edits the wiki on questions I'm following
Someone edits the short wiki on questions I'm following
Someone shares a question with me
Someone adds a related question to a question I'm following
Someone redirects a question I'm following
Answer-related
Someone comments on answers I've written
Someone votes on answers I've written
Someone removes my answer
A moderator edits my answerSuggested edits on answers
User-related
System notifications
Personal notifications
Someone starts following me
Someone asks me to answer a question
Someone shares a question with me
Someone makes me an admin
Someone removes me as an admin
An admin changes the status of my account
Someone edits my topic biography
Someone sends me a message
Topic-related
Someone gives me topics to follow
Someone endorses me on a topic
Someone suggests topics to me
Someone edits the name of a topic I'm following
Someone edits the wiki of a topic I'm following
Someone shares a topic with me
Someone merges a topic I'm following
Someone adds an alias to a topic I'm following
Someone removes an alias from a topic I'm following
Someone deletes a topic I'm following
Someone adds back a topic I'm following
SERIOUSLY?
More importantly, how does one delete their account?
Re: Show HN: Review my startup: Quora, a topic based question and answer site
#36In approximately inverse order of importance (sorry about that): * Misc.: - Don't like using my Facebook account. * UI: - Always find myself hunting for the "follow" button. - Front page is a visually undifferentiated mishmash of 20ish different questions, most of which contain no more than a few sentences of content. Also: do we really need number of answers, number of topics, follow, star, time, topics (selected ar…
Re: Show HN: Review my startup: Quora, a topic based question and answer site
#37Why did Google Checkout fail? http://www.quora.com/q/Why_did_Google_Checkout_fail What are some good reasons to take a technology company public? http://www.quora.com/q/What_are_some_good_reasons_to_take_a_... How did Mint acquire 1.5m+ users without a high viral coefficient, scalable SEO strategy, or paid customer acquisition channel? http://www.quora.com/q/How_did_Mint_acquire_1_5m_users_witho... Are most Y Combina…
Adam: Site is good, easy to use. Fix your e-mail validator (you can, afterall have a domain name that starts with a number). The facebook only signup thing is a bit of a hiccup (especially with the HN crowd) even with your priors. As for the site itself, I would recommend ditching this whole "tagging" system. For example: http://www.quora.com/q/What_are_the_typical_amounts_of_equit... Having these tags: Compensation,…
Re: Show HN: Review my startup: Quora, a topic based question and answer site
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have our own login system. We just use Facebook to connect you to people you know and get your photo. Having real identities for people and having people connected to other people who know them are important for the system to work, and we found that the best way to get those things was to require Facebook to sign up. We might add other ways to sign up later.
Your service sounds awfully lot like Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange, which seems to work just fine without the need to "verify" users or require users to login via Facebook. Why does your service need it? Also, I have no desire for a site (yours or otherwise) to take my picture and friend list from Facebook, and it's a little presumptuous for Quora to require me to provide this information.
Re: Show HN: Review my startup: Quora, a topic based question and answer site
#39No. Facebook already has enough of my data inside its walled garden. It's not getting control of my logins to other services. Add another signup method and I'll give your site due consideration.
This is a valid concern. I'm not too keen on connecting my Facebook account to things either. This may be an incredibly cool product...but I wouldn't know. I'm not clicking that blue button to find out.
Re: Show HN: Review my startup: Quora, a topic based question and answer site
#40check out Dave mcclure's post about password friction below:
http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2010/02/subscriptions-ar...