Why I Don’t Buy the Quora Hype • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Don’t Buy the Quora Hype

#31

Post by phlux » Sun, Jan 23, 2011, 6:04 PM UTC

I use Quora daily, and I find the info valuable - but the UI and the clunky-ness of the interface are debilitating.

I think that in the longer term, if they dont make topics easier to navigate and sort info from - they will lose the value they provide. For example - you cant easily browse the topics, top answers top questions etc.

The search box tries to be too cool and provide a list of what you may be searching for - but at the expense of letting you type fluidly.

The choice of fonts, sizes, colors in the UI is counter-intuitive and suggestions made to the quora team fall on arrogant ears "We designed it to be like that" rather than, you know what - you may be right - useability is affected by the slowness of the site"

Any thread with a substantial number of comments regularly crashes my browser (the thread about which startups are hiring in SF Bay will crash FF on linux) - and viewing the site on a phone is clunky, jerky and slow.

All of that aside - if they can allow people to post as quickly and efficiently as Reddit - and allow for topics to be better navigated, I think they will survive.

Re: Why I Don’t Buy the Quora Hype

#32

Post by phlux » Sun, Jan 23, 2011, 6:05 PM UTC

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #30

Something no one else has mentioned yet (perhaps for fear of plunging down the meta discussion rabbit hole) is the degree to which HN competes with Quora. As a small experiment, I'd previously posed roughly the same question to both HN and Quora. http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-optimum-pricing-strategy-fo... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2097527 The response from HN absolutely destroyed the response from Quora…

To be fair; the audience for your particular question is better on HN than Quora. If you had asked "what is the optimal pricing strategy for funding an iphone startup" quora may have been a better bet.

Re: Why I Don’t Buy the Quora Hype

#33

Post by underdown » Sun, Jan 23, 2011, 6:13 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #16

My 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/B…

In six months the site's traffic will absolutely improve as people link to answers. A newer site with as many pages as quora is not passing enough link juice around.

Re: Why I Don’t Buy the Quora Hype

#34

Post by michaelbuckbee » Sun, Jan 23, 2011, 6:17 PM UTC

phlux wrote: post #32

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #30

Something no one else has mentioned yet (perhaps for fear of plunging down the meta discussion rabbit hole) is the degree to which HN competes with Quora. As a small experiment, I'd previously posed roughly the same question to both HN and Quora. http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-optimum-pricing-strategy-fo... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2097527 The response from HN absolutely destroyed the response from Quora…

To be fair; the audience for your particular question is better on HN than Quora. If you had asked "what is the optimal pricing strategy for funding an iphone startup" quora may have been a better bet.

I'm not disagreeing with you so much as I'm still honestly sort of stumped as to what exactly is the "sweet spot" in Quora's audience.

Re: Why I Don’t Buy the Quora Hype

#35

Post by dotcoma » Sun, Jan 23, 2011, 6:18 PM UTC

zaidf wrote: post #24

Let's not kid ourselves. Any morning we will wake up to the headline "Quora acquired by Facebook."

what for ?

Re: Why I Don’t Buy the Quora Hype

#36

Post by scorpion032 » Sun, Jan 23, 2011, 6:25 PM UTC

zaidf wrote: post #24

Let's not kid ourselves. Any morning we will wake up to the headline "Quora acquired by Facebook."

This. Zuck speaks about Adam and Quora highly; no reason it wouldn't translate into an acquisition. With a $50B evaluation Zuck can very well afford back his old friends into the fold.

Re: Why I Don’t Buy the Quora Hype

#37

Post by mmaunder » Sun, Jan 23, 2011, 6:35 PM UTC

Every investor I've chatted to about Quora since it's been created has been all a-twitter because of who the team is. Because they're valley royalty the earliest users of Quora have been Valley nobility which has raised it's profile even further.

I used it once or twice but found no reason to go back and haven't been directed to go back by Google either because the site doesn't answer questions I have.

It's helpful in daily life to day that Quora is awesome because you're agreeing with Valley nobility. At least it was until Vivek's blog entry.

Re: Why I Don’t Buy the Quora Hype

#38

Post by zeemonkee » Sun, Jan 23, 2011, 6:38 PM UTC

elvirs wrote: post #5

I 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…

Agreed with you on the crappiness of Techcrunch.

However it's a bit low calling someone out as an ex-alcoholic. Call him out on the quality and integrity of his articles by all means. But his alleged alcoholism - true or otherwise - is nobody's business but his and his family's.

Re: Why I Don’t Buy the Quora Hype

#39

Post by jyan » Sun, Jan 23, 2011, 6:42 PM UTC

zaidf wrote: post #24

Let's not kid ourselves. Any morning we will wake up to the headline "Quora acquired by Facebook."

It makes sense, until you realize that Facebook does "Talent acquisitions" basically, i.e. with drop.io, friendster, etc.

He thinks highly of Adam for sure, but Adam also left Facebook to found Quora. I don't think Adam would want to be bought back by Facebook and actually stay there for any significant period of time.

Plus, there's Facebook Questions... (Of course, the quality of the questions/answers is certainly debatable)

Re: Why I Don’t Buy the Quora Hype

#40

Post by endtime » Sun, Jan 23, 2011, 7:20 PM UTC

I went on Quora a while ago and answered a few people's questions, mostly about the Stanford CS department and maybe a couple about Django or AI or something. I haven't been back on the site since - I haven't gotten any emails from Quora saying "you should answer this question" or "these people liked your answer" or "this discussion might interest you". I'm probably the kind of person they want on the site, since I actively like answering questions and helping people, but they're not doing much to keep me on there.