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I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

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Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#231

Post by pg »

Robin_Message wrote: post #184
pg wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does someone merely creating an account contribute to the community?

If you create an account, they have another user which makes it easier for them to raise money and/or figure out a way to monetise in the future, which means they are less likely to die, which means you have contributed life to the community. Of course, actually having a business model might be a better plan for them, but there have been plenty of QA sites that have not found a model that works, so that sounds harder…

What investors care about is how many people used the site last week, not how many people have accounts.

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#232

Post by jonathansizz »

codelust wrote: post #168
pg wrote: post #49

I think Adam's mistake here is to go too much by the numbers. He presumably has numbers that show that Quora ends up net ahead if they force people to create accounts to read answers. He grew Facebook very effectively by following the numbers. But he may not realize how different this case is from Facebook's. It may well be that for a site like Quora, at this stage in its life, users are not all equal. It may be a mi…

I'll keep aside the logic of whether I like what they are doing or not and ask if they have any other option. The die has already been cast in Quora's case, from what it looks like from the outside (I'm speculating wildly here), it looks like the company realized a while ago (around the time of the Charlie Cheever ousting saga) that they're growing at a pace much slower than what is expected out of them. A $11 millio…

Maybe they're not growing very fast because (quite apart from their other failings as indicated here) their entire business model is based on convincing large numbers of intelligent, knowledgeable people to produce content for them for free, which Quora can then make money off?

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#233

Post by hollerith »

codelust wrote: post #224
hollerith wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'll . . . ask if they have any other option. The other option would have been to choose not to take VC money -- or to have chosen a "business model" not heavily dependent on high-quality uncompensated contributions from users.

Not that I like much what they're doing, but I don't think those options exist anymore. As purists, we probably love the concept of organic growth a bit too much. There's nothing wrong with being a small successful company, there are tens and thousands of that out there. But building a big successful company at scale is rarely done without taking on external investment. Uncompensated users are a different issue altog…

Let me stress that I am not talking about web sites in general but rather am talking specifically about sites that depend on quality unpaid contributions from a large numbers of people.

>building a big successful company at scale is rarely done without taking on external investment.

Wikipedia is a counterexample. According to Alexa, Wikipedia is the sixth most visited web site in the world. But more to the point, no VC-funded or stock-market-funded company I know of is foolish enough to try to compete with Wikipedia. I think that fifteen years from now, we will see a similar situation among Q-and-A sites -- at least those where the answers are contributed by unpaid users. In other words, I predict that Quora -- as well as Stack Exchange, which has also taken VC funding -- will be eclipsed within 15 years by sites not funded by VC or other profit-motivated investment.

Any competition for Google Search is likely to come from companies like Apple or Microsoft that already have plenty of money to pay engineers or from investor-funded for-profit companies. That is because the "non-profit sector" is unlikely to be able to summon up enough skilled labor or funding to compete with Google Search.

In contrast, setting up a competitor to Quora or Stack Exchange is relatively easy (especially since these new entrants can learn from Experts Exchange, Stack Exchange and Quora), and going the non-profit route (or the for-profit "lifestyle business" route without external funding) does not alienate a large fraction of potential unpaid contributors.

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#234

Post by abp »

pg wrote: post #49

I think Adam's mistake here is to go too much by the numbers. He presumably has numbers that show that Quora ends up net ahead if they force people to create accounts to read answers. He grew Facebook very effectively by following the numbers. But he may not realize how different this case is from Facebook's. It may well be that for a site like Quora, at this stage in its life, users are not all equal. It may be a mi…

A little late to the party, but I want more Users!

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#235

Post by zem »

eshvk wrote: post #135

I don't agree with the author's opinion on the New York times's block being inherently evil. I am unsure of how else they could make money. The block is not hard to circumvent if you know enough to clear cookies. It is designed to give you just enough discomfort that you will probably cough up and pay for the articles (which are incredibly well written) than the Quora style which makes me want to rage and delete my a…

the "evil" bit is not that they have a paywall, it's that they both want to have a paywall and use the organic google search results for free advertising.

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#236

Post by Apocryphon »

papsosouid wrote: post #228
Apocryphon wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mod vs. unmodded issue is a classical problem on the internet, and may never be solved fully. I don't think SO's modding is any worse than Wikipedia's. As such, both are good enough.

>I don't think SO's modding is any worse than Wikipedia's I agree, it isn't any worse than one of the biggest examples of biased, overzealous, insular, clique moderation online. I think setting our standards a little higher than that is pretty reasonable though.

Wikipedia is like the biggest modded community, though. What alternatives are there for inspiration? Open source communities? Reddit? Usenet?

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#237

Post by oscargrouch »

This is not just about Quora, its more about Apple.. Apple is funny, cause its innovation creates the technology of the 2010-20, but with the old-fashion corporate mentality of the 80's.. it wins in the short-term because of its innovation quality, but lost in the long-term because of its yuppie/greedy pig style management: "Im a shark, i want all the market for myself and i will crush the competition trying to bite my cake"

This is also why Google in the long-term are winning, and this is also something to worry about, because its becoming more and more a monopoly colossus of technology; and as Andreessen use to say; "software will eat the world"

Quora are just replicating the bad/wrong side of Apple.. like a lot of old-mentality companies are doing.. trying to surf in the Apple's vacuum

Just bad for them. Just another company to be forgoten because of bad(greedy) decisions

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#238

Post by agilord »

paulgb wrote: post #29
astrodust wrote: post #2

Once Quora started blurring answers like Experts Exchange, I had no use for it. You're holding user-contributed content hostage? Go away. Complaining about usability on Quora is like complaining about not having privacy on Facebook.

Just like expert sex change, Quora has a way to see the answers without signing in (remember scrolling to the bottom?). Click the datestamp at the bottom of a blurred answer to see it. As a long-time Quora user, it disappoints me that the content I donate is held ransom in an attempt at "growth hacking".

this made my day and ended my grumbling with quora, thank you!

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#239

Post by ahoyhere »

mickhagen wrote: post #119
pg wrote: post #49

I think Adam's mistake here is to go too much by the numbers. He presumably has numbers that show that Quora ends up net ahead if they force people to create accounts to read answers. He grew Facebook very effectively by following the numbers. But he may not realize how different this case is from Facebook's. It may well be that for a site like Quora, at this stage in its life, users are not all equal. It may be a mi…

Here comes the mob. Really? Are we all gonna throw up our arms because of this? We use their service, we consume, read and digest their content like blood-suckers and now we get mad they're asking us to sign up? PG you've been reading Quora for "several years" and you think it's unjust they are asking you to sign up? Quora has let us eat at their house for years and now all they're asking is we take off our shoes bef…

You got downvoted but I wanted to address one of your questions:

"As an entrepreneur, how will we ever convince users to actually pay for products when the mob and pitch forks come out when they ask us to sign up?"

Ah, but the mob don't attack with pitchforks when you charge for a service. What they object to is bait & switch. Only a handful of random weirdos from the bowels of the internet have complained about me charging for my software.

Here's why:

Because I only have one audience -- my customers -- my job is making them happy. If I don't make them happy, they take their money elsewhere. This doesn't mean I have to do everything they ask, and for sure I don't. But the nature of our relationship is clear: Customers are the butter to my bread.

My job is simple. I do not have competing interests. Thoughts that will never arise: "Gee, I need this data for advertising, but users don't want to give it to me." "Gee, we use all this bandwidth for our free service… we need to put ads on it… but they won't like that if we tell them… I know, let's phrase it really confusingly and maybe they won't notice!" or my fave "Gee, we need to make money… I know, let's claim the rights of everything people post on our service, and stop third-party developers from distracting people from our proprietary interface."

That temptation is what leads these apps to ruin. That temptation is nearly impossible to resist… they do want & need to make money, after all.

Better to avoid temptation altogether by creating a business where charging is natural, expected, and welcomed by the would-be customers.

Re: I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora

#240

Post by Schwolop »

bad_user wrote: post #197
InclinedPlane wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, I'm more likely to fiddle about with chrome's inspector to try to remove just the right divs to get a quora page to be readable than to spend however long it takes to sign up. It's personally grating to me that they take such a boneheaded tack to content in the 21st century. Did they learn nothing from expertsexchange? It grates even more that they are putting crowd sourced content behind a wall.

Personally I don't do that. Unlike many technical people, I don't have AdBlock installed either. Giving a service attention and eyeballs in this day and age is like giving them money. It's actually worse, because you're the product and so they don't treat you like you're the customer. Even if they don't get money from you, even if you're using AdBlock, even if you are totally immune to advertising or any other means…

You're by no means required to login with facebook, and whether you do or not, broadcasting your activity to them is an opt-in.
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