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Layoffs hit Quora

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Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#231
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That plus it seems >90% of answers are guerilla advertising

And those two facts are related. Quora actively drives casual users away with the forced-login behavior. So the only people on Quora are the people with strong incentives to do so... that is, people who are being paid. Marketeers.

That's interesting. I only "follow" (or whatever they call it) a few people on Quora, and Quora sends me an email of what some of them have said over the last two or three days, and I pop over to see what the opinion is about. And, then, there's already some sort of conversation or fight underway - but usually pretty light.

Generally, I find Quora to be a pretty "ok" place to have a conversation. Better than most of Reddit, for sure. (Reddit does have some fantabulous subs to be sure, but not very many! :-) )

EDIT: HN is good for conversations in threads, although they can veer off track pretty wildly. Reddit can get pretty vitriolic. You could have a conversation, but the participants destroy it. Twitter? Fuggedaboutit. Are there sites I ought to look at where I can have a polite discussion with people that I may or may not agree with on various topics? [FWIW - Before 2008, Reddit itself was pretty close to this, except for maybe /r/politics]

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#232
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.

A company cannot survive on sympathy

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#233
post #164
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…

At one point years ago I signed-up for Quora, and the question feed was filled with stuff like: * Did Picard violate the Prime Directive in TNG S6E13? * If five ninjas attacked you, how you would you physically defeat them? * Here's the intellectual take on Spiderman fighting Batman, do you agree? * Men who have dated supermodels, what was it like? I thought it was supposed to be a somewhat serious site but it obviou…

> Did Picard violate the Prime Directive in TNG S6E13

I know you typed that randomly, but for anyone wondering:

> Geordi La Forge falls in love with a woman accused of murder in an isolated communication relay station. The Enterprise crew investigates the crime, the only other suspect is a Klingon officer who frequently visited the station. > In 2019, ScreenRant ranked it the ninth worst episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation based on IMDB ratings, which was 6.1 out of 10 at that time.[3] They were critical of the Klingon subplot and described Geordi as a sexual predator.[3]

> If five ninjas attacked you, how you would you physically defeat them?

Don’t let them circle you?

> Here's the intellectual take on Spiderman fighting Batman, do you agree?

Batman would win. Bruce Wayne is smart and has a bat cave and Peter Parker is just a junior intern at buzzfeed.

> Men who have dated supermodels, what was it like?

I would click that

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#234
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quora: the Pinterest of text search. Or is Pinterest the Quora of image search?

Nah, Pintrest is somehow amazingly good at offering similar content. People must love making those boards because I get good enough results that there must be a lot of users doing good work in categorizing and organizing those images.

It's fantastic for artists since its really easy to generate large collections of reference images on just about any subject, inspiration sources etc.

But to everyone else I'm sure it's really annoying.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#235
“We need to reduce our burn rate to a sustainable level from which we can focus on pursuing the mission and growing the business over the long term.”. The question is: what mission?

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#236
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN feels like such a sanctuary: a high quality space not (yet?) perverted by the pressures of a purely profit motive. It’d be interesting to study how does HN thrives; more deeply understand the incentives that sustain the HN ecosystem.

Thinking out loud,'I would gladly pay to be on hackernews ecosystem'.

And so would many organisations who would like to use it to influence hacker opinion.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#237

Any company that relies on SEO content is basically going to disapear. Google search and their new NLP technology is just extracting the question and answers from content like that on Quora, significantly reducing their page hit volumes. Not only that, other lower ranked content can be verified to be "true" using neural network based NLP, meaning that the value of content has gone down. Google stole the business of q…

I don’t know if blaming google is the only solution here - it’s really Quora’s fault for not building a good way to monetize into their platform.

Lots of startups do that and most of those don’t get far. Quora did and now they need to fix it. Just like code debt.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#238
post #73

Any company that relies on SEO content is basically going to disapear. Google search and their new NLP technology is just extracting the question and answers from content like that on Quora, significantly reducing their page hit volumes. Not only that, other lower ranked content can be verified to be "true" using neural network based NLP, meaning that the value of content has gone down. Google stole the business of q…

> 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.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#239
“Quora, a 10-year-old question-and-answer startup”

Companies that are ten years old are no longer startups.

“IBM, a 109-year-old software & services startup, will enhance the red carpet livestream with Grammy Insights with Watson this Sunday at the Staples Center in Los Angeles."

;)

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#240

Say what you want about how bad Quora content is, Quora has the most engaging email digest I ever knew. Every day they send me an email with some answers on topics I'm interested in, and I can't help but click on 6-8 of them from EACH email. The median CTR in any other of email digests recieved by me is zero.

I had the same interaction but one day their algorithm flubbed and sent me a question that had very obvious Avengers: Endgame spoilers in the title. I had to unsubscribe after that.

a small price to pay for salvation
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