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Quora in the next YC batch

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#91

Post by codinghorror »

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…

Sure -- you're right that the SE engine is definitely only good at specific things (namely, fact/data/science based questions), but it is arguably the best in the world at those particular things.

What is the Quora engine the best in the world at?

I'd look at growth, too. Even the less popular SE sites grow at very respectable rates. How much is Quora growing?

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#92

Post by gedrap »

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.

I think Quora is a totally different product, content wise. You don't go to Quora for programming help unless it's hello world in php. You go there for /r/iama type of questions.

Or it's just my usage, largely influenced by the weekly email.

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#93

Post by brianchu »

joshdance wrote: post #39
itsprofitbaron wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To remove that & avoid logging in / registering, just add "?share=1" to the end of the URL.

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

Most normal people don't care about having to sign up. Or how Quora is allegedly gaming Google.

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#94

Post by gedrap »

3pt14159 wrote: post #26

Quora needs to change. I get the weekly emails that they make me double click to get though (the UI here is awful, but it doubles page views) and that is basically it. They need to change, which is why I think YC is such a good fit for them. The deal was probably $1 for 0.1% or something like that. Mostly symbiotic relationship. Quora needs the reboot cred and YC likes shiny people.

>> make me double click to get though

I really don't like it. At first I thought that a link is broken or something.

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#95

Post by namenotrequired »

codinghorror wrote: post #91
adventured wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sure -- you're right that the SE engine is definitely only good at specific things (namely, fact/data/science based questions), but it is arguably the best in the world at those particular things. What is the Quora engine the best in the world at? I'd look at growth, too. Even the less popular SE sites grow at very respectable rates. How much is Quora growing?

Since neither his comment nor his profile mention it, I'll mention here for those unaware that this guy is co-founder of Stack Exchange.

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#96

Post by gedrap »

I am more interested in whether Quora will avoid the problems SO is facing.

A year ago or so, the links in the email digest were genuinely interesting. /r/iama, kind of. Now, many of them is stuff like 'the best thing you have been told' or 'how does it feel to be in love'. No thanks. If I wanted that, I would be browsing those instagram-ish images with pathetic captions. Is it their ML getting something wrong, or a general trend?

I tried to just visit quora.com but found it fairly boring and hard to browse, so I visit only through the email.

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#97

Post by OmarIsmail »

This actually makes quite a bit of sense. At the scale that YC is at now, there are already a few companies worth 10x Quora (Dropbox, Twitch, AirBnB). I'm sure even at Dropbox et al's scale both Dropbox and YC get a lot out of the ongoing relationship. Therefore, in these types of mutually beneficial scenarios why would YC or companies for that matter artificially limit themselves to only getting into such a relationship during some arbitrary timeline?

When you think about it, putting such an arbitrary limit doesn't make sense, and voila you've broken a mental barrier and can now change the rules of the game. As a founder of a YC company I would absolutely love it if YC becomes this broad "old boys/girls" network of awesome tech companies. Who actually cares about what stage the company was at when they joined YC. The more great companies part of the club, the better!

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#98

Post by stormbrew »

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.

Agreed. Though now there's something even worse in my google results that makes me even more annoyed: wiki.answers.com. It's pretty much like being treated like an idiot child.

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#100

Post by jedberg »

johnrob wrote: post #16

Keep a link to this for the initial office hours ;) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4503910

PG isn't always right you know. :)

He told the reddit guys that the logo was a distraction and if they must have it it should be at the bottom out of view.

Sometimes he does make a mistake. This previous statement of his could be one of them.

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