Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Layoffs hit Quora

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 283 posts

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#151

Post by streetcat1 »

codingslave wrote: post #23

Any company that relies on SEO content is basically going to disapear. Google search and their new NLP technology is just extracting the question and answers from content like that on Quora, significantly reducing their page hit volumes. Not only that, other lower ranked content can be verified to be "true" using neural network based NLP, meaning that the value of content has gone down. Google stole the business of q…

So can they block the google crawler? If they do not then they not really care about being crawled.

The problem is not the monopolistic and profit-driven practice. It is that consumers are not willing to pay for anything and do not mind for their data to be mined, hence the only way for B2C are ads.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#152

Post by codingslave »

geofft wrote: post #73
codingslave wrote: post #23

Any company that relies on SEO content is basically going to disapear. Google search and their new NLP technology is just extracting the question and answers from content like that on Quora, significantly reducing their page hit volumes. Not only that, other lower ranked content can be verified to be "true" using neural network based NLP, meaning that the value of content has gone down. Google stole the business of q…

> The content is simply extracted and stolen. How can we have a thriving internet when such monopolistic and profit driven practices stifle innovation and creation on the web? TripAdvisor, Quora, and Yelp are just as rent-seeking and profit-driven as Google. If I write a review on TripAdvisor or Yelp or answer a question on Quora, I, the author, certainly don't get compensated for it. If Quora fails and another compa…

Sure but atleast Quora did the hard work of building the website, getting the users, etc. They own that. I think we need to increase awareness and outcry about google stealing content from websites. They should be required to pay part of the revenue from page views to the content owners.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#153

Post by anonytrary »

codingslave wrote: post #23

Any company that relies on SEO content is basically going to disapear. Google search and their new NLP technology is just extracting the question and answers from content like that on Quora, significantly reducing their page hit volumes. Not only that, other lower ranked content can be verified to be "true" using neural network based NLP, meaning that the value of content has gone down. Google stole the business of q…

> Google search and their new NLP technology is just extracting the question and answers from content like that on Quora, significantly reducing their page hit volumes

This frustrates me, but I think Quora's UX and marketing decisions greatly exacerbated this effect. Quora shot themselves in the foot with a shotgun thanks to their sign up walls. At one point (and probably still true), you couldn't even click a link to a related question within Quora itself without being forced to sign up.

This acts as a resistance, causing people to essentially bounce from Quora back to Google after the first click, so they can get a related question or answer, which Google provides thousands of pages of for free.

Google was on one corner selling fresh-pressed lemonade, and Quora opened a lemonade stand for 10x the price on the exact same corner. Rumor has it, Google's lemonade tasted better anyway.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#154

Post by johnebgd »

codingslave wrote: post #23

Any company that relies on SEO content is basically going to disapear. Google search and their new NLP technology is just extracting the question and answers from content like that on Quora, significantly reducing their page hit volumes. Not only that, other lower ranked content can be verified to be "true" using neural network based NLP, meaning that the value of content has gone down. Google stole the business of q…

Yelp reviews are one of the biggest differentiators for me. Google reviews are always all positive.

Not that I see them much anymore. I switched to DDG and will not be switching back.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#155

Post by Antrikshy »

yamrzou wrote: post #55

I used to enjoy Quora, but it lost its charm and I quit once my feed became mostly filled with questions such as: - As a software engineer, what makes you roll your eyes every time you hear it? - What did your mother say that made your jaw drop? - What can I learn in one minute that will be useful for the rest of my life? Those open questions just feel clickbait-y, with no real value added. I occasionally see questio…

It's like r/AskReddit with a slightly different audience.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#156

Post by kabacha »

yamrzou wrote: post #55

I used to enjoy Quora, but it lost its charm and I quit once my feed became mostly filled with questions such as: - As a software engineer, what makes you roll your eyes every time you hear it? - What did your mother say that made your jaw drop? - What can I learn in one minute that will be useful for the rest of my life? Those open questions just feel clickbait-y, with no real value added. I occasionally see questio…

Yup I used to participate there almost daily but it has gotten so spammy and hard to navigate. It's lacking proper moderation.

The constant notification/email spam and ad/suggestion riddent pages didn't help either.

I'd wish something like quora would relaunch on Federation or something - surely hosting a simple QA platform can't be that difficult or expensive.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#157

Post by randompi »

anonytrary wrote: post #153
codingslave wrote: post #23

Any company that relies on SEO content is basically going to disapear. Google search and their new NLP technology is just extracting the question and answers from content like that on Quora, significantly reducing their page hit volumes. Not only that, other lower ranked content can be verified to be "true" using neural network based NLP, meaning that the value of content has gone down. Google stole the business of q…

> Google search and their new NLP technology is just extracting the question and answers from content like that on Quora, significantly reducing their page hit volumes This frustrates me, but I think Quora's UX and marketing decisions greatly exacerbated this effect. Quora shot themselves in the foot with a shotgun thanks to their sign up walls. At one point (and probably still true), you couldn't even click a link t…

Which reminds me Facebook's wall worked perfectly for them. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind signing up yet another account among the hundreds of accounts I already have.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#158

Post by droopyEyelids »

irjustin wrote: post #47

I've said it in a few other posts but post WeWork, a lot of the big D, E, F companies are expected to hit profitability/break-even soon. Some other threads are talking about Google stealing a lot of the content. That's definitely true for weather, flights, but things like long form content is still long form. I would argue these layoffs aren't a function of the GMachine at work, but more generally all the big tech fi…

This feels insightful. I work for a big tech company (not faang) and we're doing a bunch of insane cost cutting bullshit and we've had a hiring freeze for maybe 10 months now.

It's interesting to see the inside view but see that none of it hits the financial press, or even the analyst stuff like seeking alpha.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#159

Post by tima101 »

We talked to Quora's CEO about 2 years ago about premium content and alternative business models, including subscription.

There was no interest at the time and advertising was a sole focus for business model.

CEO never followed up.

Sad.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#160

Post by Paul-ish »

txcwpalpha wrote: post #64
arexxbifs wrote: post #9

> a 10-year-old question-and-answer startup Has the word "startup" simply replaced "company"? I'm thinking we should at least draw the line at a full decade.

I have recently interviewed at one of the largest, oldest educational institutions in the US, and also interviewed at one of the largest tech companies in the world. Both of them used the phrase “want to work at a startup?” in the job descriptions and both hiring manager said something along the lines of “we have a great startup culture”. At this point the word is meaningless to me. If anything I have noticed that “w…

I recently had an interview at Mozilla. I remember the interviewer responding to one of my culture questions with "We aren't a startup by any measure... Firefox is one of the oldest software artifacts on the internet still being maintained."

+10 for candor

Post reply on HN