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Quora collects $80 million in funding

cnet.com

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Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#11

Post by yalogin »

Can someone explain how there a place for Quora? The only niche I can think of is generic technical advise.

Stackoverflow answers all the tech questions but they are overly pedantic to the point of ridiculous when it comes to generic tech questions.

Hackernews should have been the correct place for generic tech advise but we don't see questions of that nature here. May be as far as tech advise goes people from startups would rather write blog posts and get some credibility for their companies rather than contribute anonymously.

So how is Quora relevant or can be? On top of that they only show you one question. So that boggles my mind as to why it can become popular if its gated to begin with.

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#12

Post by rokhayakebe »

leobabauta wrote: post #4

I also really dislike their model of making you sign in to see more than one answer. Annoying your potential users is a bad policy.

I had a content site from January 2011 until September 2013. From the first day until June 2013 I had less than 100 sign ups. Then I forced people to enter their email before the opaque screen is removed to allow click-through. The result: 8000+ emails from June to September..... Then I accidentally deleted my database (without backup).

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#13

Post by wiremine »

yalogin wrote: post #11

Can someone explain how there a place for Quora? The only niche I can think of is generic technical advise. Stackoverflow answers all the tech questions but they are overly pedantic to the point of ridiculous when it comes to generic tech questions. Hackernews should have been the correct place for generic tech advise but we don't see questions of that nature here. May be as far as tech advise goes people from startu…

> The only niche I can think of is generic technical advise.

I think that's their main thrust at this point.

However, I've recently seen Q&As regarding my home town:

- What are the best restaurants?

- What is parking like?

- What are the hidden gems in the city?

- Etc.

The quality of the answers is higher than what you'd see on Yahoo Answers, and more timely.

So, I can envision a Quora that is valuable outside of technical questions.

But that assumes they can retain the quality and keep the timeliness, IMHO.

To use SO as an example: StackOverflow is running into the timeliness issue: I've been building a Rails 4 app recently, and a LOT Of SEO questions are out-of-date on. I can google around that problem due to my professional needs, but I doubt a general Q&A site would retain an audience in the long-term if the same problem emerged.

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#14

Post by feintruled »

Quora seems to have taken a strange turn recently - their email digest is full of creepy racial questions like "do white girls find Indian men disgusting?" and "do Asian men mind if Asian girls date white men?"

I guess you can't stop such questions being asked, but they frequently appear as the top question in the digest and thus in the subject line. I deregistered off the back of that. (Come to think of it, not sure exactly when I registered in the first place!)

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#15

Post by [deleted] »

feintruled wrote: post #14

Quora seems to have taken a strange turn recently - their email digest is full of creepy racial questions like "do white girls find Indian men disgusting?" and "do Asian men mind if Asian girls date white men?" I guess you can't stop such questions being asked, but they frequently appear as the top question in the digest and thus in the subject line. I deregistered off the back of that. (Come to think of it, not sure…

[deleted]

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#16

Post by hitchhiker999 »

I have a q&a site with 4 million visitors a month - an ESL learning site. We have 2 employees, total cost https://siteanalytics.compete.com/quora.com/ they have only a million visitors a month??? - I'm guessing that must be wrong.

My question: What in pickled f*s are these people doing with 80 million on a Q&A site? How far out of the reach of reality is this industry?

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#17

Post by akc »

hitchhiker999 wrote: post #16

I have a q&a site with 4 million visitors a month - an ESL learning site. We have 2 employees, total cost https://siteanalytics.compete.com/quora.com/ they have only a million visitors a month??? - I'm guessing that must be wrong. My question: What in pickled f*s are these people doing with 80 million on a Q&A site? How far out of the reach of reality is this industry?

what's your site?

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#18

Post by pmorici »

yalogin wrote: post #11

Can someone explain how there a place for Quora? The only niche I can think of is generic technical advise. Stackoverflow answers all the tech questions but they are overly pedantic to the point of ridiculous when it comes to generic tech questions. Hackernews should have been the correct place for generic tech advise but we don't see questions of that nature here. May be as far as tech advise goes people from startu…

"Hackernews should have been the correct place for generic tech advise but we don't see questions of that nature here."

In my experience HN isn't a great place to ask questions like that, at least not any more. I tried to post an "Ask HN" question about pricing hardware and working with re-sellers the other day. First, under a newly created account so I could share more details; that submission was immediately killed I assume as a preventative measure against spam. So then I posted a much more generic version asking the same question under my typical username it floated to the bottom of the new page w/o getting any votes or responses. So I went over to Quora posted the same thing anonymously and had a reasonable answer and pointers to things to read up on in a couple hours. I like HN and have been reading it regularly for years but it isn't a replacement for Quora

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#19

Post by hitchhiker999 »

akc wrote: post #17
hitchhiker999 wrote: post #16

I have a q&a site with 4 million visitors a month - an ESL learning site. We have 2 employees, total cost https://siteanalytics.compete.com/quora.com/ they have only a million visitors a month??? - I'm guessing that must be wrong. My question: What in pickled f*s are these people doing with 80 million on a Q&A site? How far out of the reach of reality is this industry?

what's your site?

Can I PM that to you?

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#20

Post by JumpCrisscross »

yalogin wrote: post #11

Can someone explain how there a place for Quora? The only niche I can think of is generic technical advise. Stackoverflow answers all the tech questions but they are overly pedantic to the point of ridiculous when it comes to generic tech questions. Hackernews should have been the correct place for generic tech advise but we don't see questions of that nature here. May be as far as tech advise goes people from startu…

I used to answer questions on Quora. Hacker News has captured the bulk of that free time. But I still post my esoteric questions on Quora. For example, asking about the source of a Manhattan smoke plume [1], the species of a bird I spotted on a walk [2].

[1] https://www.quora.com/New-York-City/What-does-the-smoke-NYC-...

[2] https://www.quora.com/Birds/What-is-this-bird

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