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Quora in the next YC batch

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#81

Post by adventured »

meritt wrote: post #70
dude_abides wrote: post #11

Hard to imagine what's in it for Quora. - Network connections? Their CEO is the former CTO of Facebook. - Help with fundraising? They raised $80mm at $900mm valuation not more than a month ago. I strongly suspect Quora is planning a huge pivot which they feel is ambitious but doable in 3 months, and YC believes in the value of this pivot; that is the only plausible explanation I can think of.

Direction probably. Quora has floundered for nearly 5 years, burned millions of dollars and still has a questionable product. Meanwhile Stack Exchange has been around only a year longer, a fraction of the funding, and pretty well owns the entire question-answer niche.

Stack Exchange owns the question & answer niche? I don't hardly think so. Yahoo Answers, as bad as it is, is massive, and shows up throughout Google's top results; ditto answers.com; and Quora is a top 500 site.

Stack has seven sites getting at least 100,000 visits per day. One is a break out homerun (Stack Overflow obviously), and it drastically dwarfs the other sites. All but a few of their top 20+ sites are strictly technology focused, and the others are geek friendly (math and video games), so they cross over conveniently.

Most of their network is flailing. Photography is 3 years old and gets a whopping seven questions per day - that's what most of their network looks like.

Stack doesn't even remotely own the Q&A category. They own one piece of it, and will never own anything more than that, because they can't translate success in technical Q&A to other categories well. You can beat StackExchange at any given of their smaller niche sites, because they can't do them as well as someone that is dedicated to just that niche - the same reason Quora et al can't compete with Stack Overflow.

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#82

Post by grmarcil »

alain94040 wrote: post #28
hnnewguy wrote: post #18

Funny thing, I visited Quora today, for the first time in a while. Years, maybe: Googled something, Quora near top results, clicked link, "signup" nag screen, results blurred out, left page. I guess I still don't get it. Curious to see what this will be about.

I guess this will be interesting in light of yesterday's Founder Ethics post ( http://ycombinator.com/founderethics/ )

Are you suggesting that putting content behind a registration wall is somehow unethical?

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#83

Post by rfrey »

grmarcil wrote: post #82
alain94040 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this will be interesting in light of yesterday's Founder Ethics post ( http://ycombinator.com/founderethics/ )

Are you suggesting that putting content behind a registration wall is somehow unethical?

I think some people find the apparent gaming of Google unethical. They seem to expose the content to Google but hide it from people who click through.

That might not be what's happening. It does give that impression though.

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#84

Post by mikeleeorg »

dude_abides wrote: post #11

Hard to imagine what's in it for Quora. - Network connections? Their CEO is the former CTO of Facebook. - Help with fundraising? They raised $80mm at $900mm valuation not more than a month ago. I strongly suspect Quora is planning a huge pivot which they feel is ambitious but doable in 3 months, and YC believes in the value of this pivot; that is the only plausible explanation I can think of.

Very interesting move. I love the concept of Quora and used to lose many hours going "Quora surfing." But as I fine-tuned the categories I followed, I found the fun of surfing random topics less enjoyable as my homepage feed filled with the same ole' topics and content.

Recently, I've begun an experiment to see if answering questions within my domain can help with "personal branding." It seems to have netted me a few new followers on Quora and Twitter, but I haven't noticed a substantial benefit yet.

I also started using it as inspiration for blog posts, though I'm blogging on my own site and not on Quora (not sure what's in it for me to blog on Quora). In the past, I've seen other blogs (e.g. TechCrunch) use Quora posts as the basis for articles too.

In terms of the "is Quora a vitamin or pain killer" question, it's very much a vitamin for me. Stack Exchange is a much better community for getting specific technical answers, which are the most common kinds of questions I hunt for on the web. I tend to ask my personal network for business & marketing questions, since it's difficult to explain my specific situation in a Quora question. (Being too specific sometimes runs the risk of no answers; being too general sometimes runs the risk of unhelpful answers, I've found.)

I would suspect this is the foundation for a pivot too. The advice from the YC partners and alumni network could be pretty helpful.

So best of luck to whatever they are going to pivot into!

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#85

Post by mrgn »

harryh wrote: post #7

It would be interesting the learn the terms of the deal. Presumably it's nothing like the standard $120k for 7%. I'm struggling to figure out how this makes sense as a part of the y combinator investment portfolio. EDIT: The only plausible thing I can see Quora wanting that Y Combinator has is access to talent. Is this a recruiting move?

Quora would have to be having an extremely difficult time hiring for it to be a recruiting move. A Venn diagram of engineers or designers for whom Quora is more interesting when affiliated with Y Combinator, whom Quora would also want to hire, but who could not already join most other Y Combinator startups does not overlap.

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#86

Post by habosa »

chriskelley wrote: post #47
hnnewguy wrote: post #18

Funny thing, I visited Quora today, for the first time in a while. Years, maybe: Googled something, Quora near top results, clicked link, "signup" nag screen, results blurred out, left page. I guess I still don't get it. Curious to see what this will be about.

I rarely initialize my use of Quora by visiting the website - I have found immense value in the digest emails they send. They are a mix of things they know I'm explicitly interested in, and generally "interesting" things (presumably defined by popularity). Probably 90% of the time after receive a digest email, I open at least 2 or 3 of the links within. I have tried visiting the site directly and am rarely able to fi…

Agree about the digest emails. That's the only reason I go on Quora anymore but they have about 100% CTR for me.

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#88

Post by adventured »

seanalltogether wrote: post #48
joshdance wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But most normal people won't know how to do this.

And the rest of us will forget 10 minutes from now. I really don't understand why people give quora a free pass on this when expertsexchange was nuked by the rest of the online community for inventing these tactics.

I actually like Quora's answers typically, but I always forget the share 'trick' to removing the blur, despite seeing it here numerous times. I won't actively use Quora because of the blur, I simply disagree with that tactic (and I think they're cheating when it comes to SEO (by presenting a different experience to visitors than they do Google's bots), and that Google is choosing not to punish it).

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#90

Post by meritt »

adventured wrote: post #81
meritt wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Direction probably. Quora has floundered for nearly 5 years, burned millions of dollars and still has a questionable product. Meanwhile Stack Exchange has been around only a year longer, a fraction of the funding, and pretty well owns the entire question-answer niche.

Stack Exchange owns the question & answer niche? I don't hardly think so. Yahoo Answers, as bad as it is, is massive, and shows up throughout Google's top results; ditto answers.com; and Quora is a top 500 site. Stack has seven sites getting at least 100,000 visits per day. One is a break out homerun (Stack Overflow obviously), and it drastically dwarfs the other sites. All but a few of their top 20+ sites are strict…

Fair points. Quora though seems pretty well aimed at the same subcategories which Stack Exchange excels.
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