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Layoffs hit Quora

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Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#181
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively The fed is ensuring liquidity in the overnight markets via short term loans which are paid back the next day (no one seems to know why there’s less liquidity there, could be higher asset values require greater liquid reserves, or some form of capital outflow tightening usd liquidity due to the strength of the dollar, or something else?) Unemployment is exceeding low, which means more jobs are filled, wh…

> no one seems to know why there’s less liquidity there It's because JPMorgan Chase and friends think there is too much risk of intraday bankruptcy right now and no one wants to be left hanging on their loan.

here's an interesting thought experiment.. what happens to your loan when your bank goes bankrupt ?

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#182
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.

/r/AskReddit but with no moderation. Anyone can ask any question no matter how dumb.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#183

> 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.

Startup is a company with unproven business model.

Barbershop on a corner is not a startup, it is known how this works and what it takes to make it profitable.

Barbershop in World of Warcraft or some other MMO which makes haircuts to your virtual Orcs is a startup, cause no one knows if this is viable as a business at all.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#184
post #142
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…

These kind of questions where most likely generated by paid question askers who receive a cut of the ad revenue. I have first hand knowledge of somebody who made pretty good money doing exactly that. His rule of thumb was: the dumber the question, the more profitable it was for him.

What has always amazed me about Quora is that for every dumb one line question in the vein of "How do we know that the moon is not made of cheese?" there would be 500 word very well researched reply from an ex NASA chief of lunar mission. It always was baffling for me that such low effort questions would get such amazing answers.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#185

> 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.

Startup is a company with unproven business model. Barbershop on a corner is not a startup, it is known how this works and what it takes to make it profitable. Barbershop in World of Warcraft or some other MMO which makes haircuts to your virtual Orcs is a startup, cause no one knows if this is viable as a business at all.

How is an advertising driven website not a proven business model?

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#186
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…

To be fair Ask HN questions are often clickbait-y too. Like: - "What book made the most impact on you"? - "Best tech talk you watched in 2019"? - "How you beat procrastination"?

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#187
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how that would help. I imagine currently its all rights reserved, and google is claiming that using their information is fair use.

How come they're not being sued over this?

If you sue them they’ll just remove you from the index. It’s a “heads I win, tails you lose” situation for Google.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#188
IMO these types of companies never had a future. They only succeeded because of monetary inflation in the corporate sphere due to ultra-low interest rates.

If the interest repayment on a bank loan is less than 2%, then it means that any business which can make more than 2% profit on their activities is profitable. But do such businesses deserve to exist? The Fed sets the interest rate so they decide what kind of business is profitable and is allowed to exist.

It's obvious why the current economy has benefited tech companies that operate at high scale with ultra-low or close to 0 profit margins.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#189
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Startup is a company with unproven business model. Barbershop on a corner is not a startup, it is known how this works and what it takes to make it profitable. Barbershop in World of Warcraft or some other MMO which makes haircuts to your virtual Orcs is a startup, cause no one knows if this is viable as a business at all.

How is an advertising driven website not a proven business model?

Every website has different ways of acquiring traffic. Quora's way of doing business isn't yet shown to be self-sustainable, which makes their business model unproven.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

/r/AskReddit but with no moderation. Anyone can ask any question no matter how dumb.

Isn't that true of AskReddit too? Nobody moderates the endless "girls of Reddit, what's something sexy that men don't realise?" questions.
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