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Layoffs hit Quora

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Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#261

Post by manigandham »

bertil wrote: post #238
geofft wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Quora is compensating writers (at least those they deem the best) as Partners.

How do you know this? The only published program is paying for questions, and they had a trial of "knowledge prizes" years ago as a contest for the best answers but it was shut down. As a "top writer" for 2 years, I've heard nothing about any payments for writers.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#262

Post by conjectures »

tanilama wrote: post #176
Mirioron wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that sounds fine though. You could consider HN to be "like reddit" too, but there's still value in HN.

HN is not valuing itself at 2B dollars, that is the problem. It is Quora itself that needs to justify against that valuation, not anyone else. Where that is fine or not, I think the news itself is self-explanatory.

It's interesting how the value the owners get from HN is more kudos and relevant discourse.

I'm finding it hard to think of other domains with succesful quasi-public institutions run by for-profits without monetization. Are there other examples?

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#263

Post by majani »

commandlinefan wrote: post #255
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…

> big D, E, F companies D,E,F companies?

Series D,E,F funding

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#264

Post by colejohnson66 »

asymptotically2 wrote: post #225
plerpin wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered that Quora is failing because it's user-hostile? I do not visit Quora links on Google because I know it's going to tease me with a snippet and force me to login.

It would be nice if there was a way to block certain domains from Google (or any other search engine) results. There are also a lot of sites that seem like they scrape posts from StackOverflow that I would like to block too.

There’s extensions for that. One such is (as mentioned by @bubblethink): https://www.jeffersonscher.com/gm/google-hit-hider/

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#265

Post by geofft »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #253
geofft wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the paradox there? Google has its own review system for restaurants / hotels / etc., so they can definitely survive TripAdvisor and Yelp disappearing. They'll just collect the data themselves. For Quora and StackOverflow, they can (and do) index personal blogs etc., too. Google is a search engine; they don't need a single fixed third party to be the first search result to all questions in a category.

Just having a review site is missing the big picture. People want authenticity and trusted reviews. Google doesn't know if you really bought the Amazon item, booked the hotel through TripAdvisor, etc. Google can collect data, but is it any good if they do it themselves?

Do TripAdvisor or Yelp know if I really visited that restaurant or that hotel? Does Quora or StackOverflow know if I really worked on that project or studied that subject? Clearly, there's widespread public internet in reviews without the automated verification.

And if you want it, Google sees most credit card transactions. In 2017, they said, "Google’s third-party partnerships ... capture approximately 70% of credit and debit card transactions in the United States." https://adwords.googleblog.com/2017/05/powering-ads-and-anal... (Later reporting found a deal with MasterCard, at least.) So they could absolutely know if you bought the Amazon item or booked the hotel, if they wanted.

I wholeheartedly agree that there's a centralization concern about letting one company have so much power, but that doesn't change that there doesn't seem to be much advantage in another party being the review aggregator. If we can't figure out how to return control to the actual reviewers, Google is no worse of an aggregator.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#266

Post by geofft »

gist wrote: post #246
geofft wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. But you do get 'compensated' you get a good feeling from it. Along those lines there are many things that people do in which they get 'compensated' not by money or that money isn't the primary motivator. Jeff Bezos does not get up and go to work every day because he wants to amass more mo…

I don't disagree with you - but then there's no harm in the Quoras or TripAdvisors of the world failing to make a profit, is there? Those of us who review for the joy of reviewing and of being useful will keep doing it even if other people can't figure out how to rent-seek, and there is no risk to a vibrant internet.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#267

Post by mam2 »

codingslave wrote: post #152
geofft wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And google did the effort to build the NLP...

There is no moral high ground in this story.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#268

Post by manigandham »

rgoulter wrote: post #168
codingslave wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I think the downfall of quora is partly due to their product managers decision making and the machine learning recommendation engine. Both of which are abysmal even with all that Harvard and Stanford talent they have

My main interaction with Quota is its digest emails. I thought the recommendation is pretty good in terms of catching some attention. What's wrong with it?

The recommendation is highly sensitive to who you follow. Many of the long-time users have a great feed, but starting out with a clean slate presents rather poor results.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#269

Post by gumby »

I don't understand why Quora had so many employees. I don't intend to harsh on them: I literally don't understand their business.

To my naïve understanding: they have an authentication system, a moderately high throughput CMS with a search engine, and...? + User-generated content. OK, some DevOps people, some people who negotiate with the CDNs. They seem pretty snappy so some serious work presumably went into the back end, but still. WhatsApp had only 50 people!

What am I completely missing here? why did they have 200 people?

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#270

Post by echelon »

aperiodic wrote: post #137
echelon wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My total comp (salary plus RSUs) is 400k, and my (now fully vested and liquid) stock options are worth 2.5M. I realize not everyone can replicate that, but I did this in Atlanta, not SF. I also can drive 7 minutes to work or run 30 minutes on the Beltline and shower when I get in. There are more trees here than SF, and we have full seasons. It's also way more diverse. Not everyone is in tech. The dating scene is grea…

I've actually been thinking of moving to Atlanta recently. I live in Portland OR right now, so the sprawl of Atlanta scares me, but I've heard there are good walkable pockets of it. I walk my dog 2 hours a day; are there places where the sidewalk density is high enough and the busy road density low enough that I could do that and have some route optionality so I'm not just doing the same walk all the time?

Sorry for the late reply.

The Beltline plus Piedmont Park is a perfect fit. The Beltline is linear, but long (it circles the city), and all of the connected neighborhoods are extremely walkable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeltLine

Piedmont Park and Ansley are beautiful.

The Beltline will eventually connect to the Silver Comet trail, which is a completely paved bike path that extends all the way to Alabama.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Comet_Trail

If you're willing to get in the car, the Palisades, Kennesaw Mountain, and more are not far. They're extremely dog friendly, and I visit them often.

https://www.atlantatrails.com/hiking-trails/hiking-east-pali...

Also, Fetch Dog Park is freaking amazing. It's a dog park with alcohol. It blew up, and now they're opening four more locations in two other states.

https://atlantapetlife.com/fetch-dog-park/

You shouldn't have any problem.

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