I think I know what this is about.
It's a neat idea. (My lack of specificity isn't a sign of cynicism; in fact, I like the idea.)
I'll give a hint: semi-supervised learning.
Quora in the next YC batch
61–70 of 188 posts
Re: Quora in the next YC batch
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a webapp that lets us take/make bets on things like this? Not for money of course, but purely to gauge sentiment.
Or better yet, is there a webapp that lets us ask questions and post answers for others?
Yahoo Answers has been doing ok in this space, there's perhaps room for another solid contender though.
Re: Quora in the next YC batch
#63Re: Quora in the next YC batch
#64Earlier 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.
There is a weird hivemind effect on display here and in other various Silicon Valley discussion circles where there is an unstated but very solid agreement that certain companies are "cool" and thus receive the most charitable interpretation of their plans and financial situations, but others which do essentially the same thing are run out of town on a rail, so to speak.
Take for example the story from today about Apple supposedly buying Beats. When the subject of Apple trying to compete in the music streaming space came up, everyone only talked about Spotify. Pandora, which has more than 3x the user base and is still growing? Not a mention. IHeartRadio, which was founded two years after Spotify and has more than double the number of paying subscribers that Spotify does? Never heard of them! It's as though Spotify is the only streaming music service that ever existed. In reality, they are near the lower end of the scale when it comes to customer traction, but they have mindshare on HN that is completely out of whack with that.
Re: Quora in the next YC batch
#65Le Sigh.
Now PG and his team of suits will use their persuasion to convince a bigger fool to buy Quora, and let all the investors off the hook. And so it goes.. in Silicon Valley.
Re: Quora in the next YC batch
#66Hard 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.
Is there a webapp that lets us take/make bets on things like this? Not for money of course, but purely to gauge sentiment.
well I created http://www.startupbets.com/ for fun at the last TC disrupt hackathon, but requires me to create the questions
Re: Quora in the next YC batch
#67YC has always been experimental, it worked out well for non-profits. The more experiments you do the better you can make it work.
Re: Quora in the next YC batch
#68Funny 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.
To remove that & avoid logging in / registering, just add "?share=1" to the end of the URL.
i avoid logging in / registering by avoiding quora. There's plenty of sites out there that don't engage in scummy growth tactics and try to harvest my personal information unnecessarily, i'll visit them instead.
Re: Quora in the next YC batch
#69[deleted]
Re: Quora in the next YC batch
#70Hard 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.