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Quora collects $80 million in funding

cnet.com

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Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#61

Post by gagaga »

webwright wrote: post #44
wpietri wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a really good Q&A site. I was a Quora Top Writer in 2012 and 2013, and I've also built a lot of web stuff and spent a lot of time studying web communities. Purely from a craftsmanship perspective, they've done an incredible job. The visual design, the interaction design, the writing and reading experiences, the social incentives, the notification system: all of it is top notch. That said, I have never understoo…

"The visual design, the interaction design, the writing and reading experiences, the social incentives, the notification system: all of it is top notch." I SO disagree here. It's a mess. It's 10x more complex than it needs to be. And it's horribly unapproachable for new/non-geeky users. I've had non-technical relatives sit down and try to use it who were positively baffled by the user-experience. I think Quora is an…

Definitely agree. Some of the stuff is just terribly confusing and very visually dense.

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#62

Post by skolos »

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.

Or you can just add ?share=1 to the end of a Quora link to remove overlay.

I had an account with them, but removed it after they started showing others what questions I was reading. Does Quora still do this?

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#63

Post by gagaga »

What would happen if we valued forums the way we value tech sites? What would SomethingAwful's valuation be in today's tech world when it had the engagement and content creation power it held in the early 2000s ?

To me, Quora is really nothing more than a glorified forum.

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#64

Post by orky56 »

From personal experience, Quora started off really hot. Many influential tech people were answering very basic questions with highly impactful answers. It really was an honest look into how some great minds think. Peer voting really separated the noise and allowed smart contributors to rise up through the answers.

And then, the content got dry. It was the same questions with relatively similar answers. The newsfeed became more about showcasing content from months or even years ago to make it look more fresh. It really became a brand recognition and marketing tool to allow individuals to answer any industry-related question with their product/service/company in the context.

And then, posts came about. It made sense that authors would want to contribute their own insights without it being an answer to an already posed question. However, new sites like Medium, Svbtle, and Posthaven are much better tools for this although they each have their own content niche. Quora has become a redundant tool where people repost their blogs.

So where does that leave Quora? They have always had an issue going past the iron curtain of Silicon Valley. It's been difficult for them to engage the average, non-techie consumer. Even if they don't care about this demographic, it will be hard for them to sustain growth among techies. They must be quickly approaching a ceiling for unique users so then they must capitalize on engagement and retention. I'm curious how they decide to go about this.

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#65

Post by Rynant »

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.

As skolos mentioned you can add '?share=1' to a Quora URL to view all the answers.[1]

To make this easier for myself, I use a bookmarklet with:

  javascript:(function(){window.location=window.location.toString()+"?share=1";})()
[1] https://blog.quora.com/Making-Sharing-Better

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#67

Post by davedx »

orky56 wrote: post #64

From personal experience, Quora started off really hot. Many influential tech people were answering very basic questions with highly impactful answers. It really was an honest look into how some great minds think. Peer voting really separated the noise and allowed smart contributors to rise up through the answers. And then, the content got dry. It was the same questions with relatively similar answers. The newsfeed b…

I missed the early Quora. By the time I stumbled onto it it resembled a "modern" Experts Exchange.

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#68

Post by AznHisoka »

sixQuarks wrote: post #55
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?

First, you have a great site! congratulations. Second, there is no way Quora only gets 1.5 million visitors per month. They have an Alexa ranking in the 400s. Yes, the tech audience skews this, but even a tech-heavy audience can't skew it that badly. Getting in the top 500 of Alexa is very, very difficult. My guess is that they get at least 10 million visitors per month.

I disagree. MyFitnessPal is in the top rankings in Alexa, and they get less than that. Add to to fact that tech is more skewed, I wager they get a bit less than a million a month.

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#69

Post by orky56 »

davedx wrote: post #67
orky56 wrote: post #64

From personal experience, Quora started off really hot. Many influential tech people were answering very basic questions with highly impactful answers. It really was an honest look into how some great minds think. Peer voting really separated the noise and allowed smart contributors to rise up through the answers. And then, the content got dry. It was the same questions with relatively similar answers. The newsfeed b…

I missed the early Quora. By the time I stumbled onto it it resembled a "modern" Experts Exchange.

It really felt like a televised red carpet even for an awards show. You get a chance to see all the celebrities and connect with them in the moment. In SV, it's more about becoming them through learnings rather than dreaming about being them through spectating.

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#70

Post by kumarski »

dang wrote: post #53
mknits wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really americans are fucking idiots. They think whatever they think and use is correct! Stupid assholes. So if americans use some otherwise popular qna website much less, they think it's foolish to spend 80 million fucking dollars on that. Enjoy the fucking kickstarter.

Please don't post comments like this to Hacker News. They violate the two most important values of the site: substance and civility.

How you stay so aggressively on top of all comments amazes me.
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