They have a lot of good data to identify positive users. Also they have considerably more latitude than your average geek q&a site, since there is no firehose, and no visible karma score. Don't count them out yet.
Why I Don’t Buy the Quora Hype
11–20 of 82 posts
Re: Why I Don’t Buy the Quora Hype
#12Maybe I just got up on the wrong side of the bed, but am I the only one who was put off by this comment:
"Quora’s membership is growing largely because of the attention that TechCrunch has given it."?
Re: Why I Don’t Buy the Quora Hype
#13I am surprised by the fact that arrington allowed an article that criticizes tehcrunch for being hype machine (which it is). Regarding quora, yes it gets too much techcrunch attention but it is not as flawed as the writer thinks, quora generates quality content thanks to its quality users, while quality may start to decline as number of users grows(something that happens to almost all startups) it is possible to prev…
flagged for ad hominon attacks.
Re: Why I Don’t Buy the Quora Hype
#14He is both right and wrong on this. Right, for the present: Quora is special because of who is there, not what , and there is an upper limit to the success of a fan-club. But he is wrong in the long term, or could be wrong, if Quora adapts and allows the rest of the world to create their own fan-club universes. If it goes on to inspire communities from different backgrounds, fields, industries and specialties, then y…
So then what's to say the Stack Exchange platform doesn't just expand to all other areas of life. I'd bet more on SE being more predominant on the web then Quora, since their platform already is modelled this way. It's owner actually said this is the success of such QA websites - create them in "verticals". (don't have the quote, but remember reading it somewhere)
Re: Why I Don’t Buy the Quora Hype
#15Can't agree more! Wait till 'Quora' version of Social Media experts start spamming the site.
Pretty sure there's already plenty of self-serving questions - there's lots of questions asking what [startup] does, or what platform [startup] uses for their trivially small traffic.
Eg what is quora built on... with 3000 visitors a day their technical decisions are untested, unscaled, and uninteresting.
http://www.quora.com/What-languages-and-frameworks-were-used...
Re: Why I Don’t Buy the Quora Hype
#16My problem with the Quora hype is that its only in the TechCrunch echo chamber. Even relatively tech saavy people I know don't know Quora unless they read TechCrunch (and a LOT of very techincal people don't read TechCrunch). And I don't mean they know about it, just haven't used it. I mean they literally haven't heard of it before.
I've never been to Quora and this is somewhat surprising given the number of Google/Bing searches I do that take me a Yahoo Answers page or StackOverflow. I'm surprised I've never once even seen a Quora page on page 1 of a Bing/Google search I've done.
It's a weird very bimodal hype. I tend to agree with the author. Unless something drastically changes in the next 6-12 months, it will be a niche site with much less hype.
Re: Why I Don’t Buy the Quora Hype
#17I don't know much about Quora, and have never used it, so I can't comment on its chances of success. But I really don't like the name, and I think it may hold them back, as far as mainstream adoption goes. It's not an attractive name to begin with, and I don't quite know how to pronounce it: koo aura or kwaura (rhymes with Laura)? If we're comparing Quora to Facebook and Twitter, it loses the name game by a mile. Fac…
I think your massively overstating the importance of a name to the success of a company. Unless a name is straight up awful and suggests something unpleasant - it won't have an impact on the success/failure of a company.
People thought google was pretty stupid. The word Microsoft doesn't really mean anything. IBM is relatively meaningless, ditto for HP. All of those companies are massively successful because of the products they built. That's really the only thing that matters.
Re: Why I Don’t Buy the Quora Hype
#18I don't know much about Quora, and have never used it, so I can't comment on its chances of success. But I really don't like the name, and I think it may hold them back, as far as mainstream adoption goes. It's not an attractive name to begin with, and I don't quite know how to pronounce it: koo aura or kwaura (rhymes with Laura)? If we're comparing Quora to Facebook and Twitter, it loses the name game by a mile. Fac…
I think your massively overstating the importance of a name to the success of a company. Unless a name is straight up awful and suggests something unpleasant - it won't have an impact on the success/failure of a company. People thought google was pretty stupid. The word Microsoft doesn't really mean anything. IBM is relatively meaningless, ditto for HP. All of those companies are massively successful because of the p…
IBM and HP both mean something...
Re: Why I Don’t Buy the Quora Hype
#19You can talk about your own products and services, and disparage others’; in other words, it is a spammers’ paradise.
Same argument was used against Wikipedia back in the day.
Re: Why I Don’t Buy the Quora Hype
#20I don't know much about Quora, and have never used it, so I can't comment on its chances of success. But I really don't like the name, and I think it may hold them back, as far as mainstream adoption goes. It's not an attractive name to begin with, and I don't quite know how to pronounce it: koo aura or kwaura (rhymes with Laura)? If we're comparing Quora to Facebook and Twitter, it loses the name game by a mile. Fac…
I think your massively overstating the importance of a name to the success of a company. Unless a name is straight up awful and suggests something unpleasant - it won't have an impact on the success/failure of a company. People thought google was pretty stupid. The word Microsoft doesn't really mean anything. IBM is relatively meaningless, ditto for HP. All of those companies are massively successful because of the p…
Meaning =/= easy to say and pronounce.
Apple Dell Yahoo Microsoft Google Facebook Myspace
None of these really mean anything, but they're all easy to say and spell. Quora, not so much. Considering that word of mouth is the single most important "marketing method", I think it's relevant at some level.