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Ask HN: Why is Quora popular all of a sudden?

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Ask HN: Why is Quora popular all of a sudden?

#1
It seems like Quora has been popping up in Google searches more and more lately, and it's doubled in popularity in the last year [0]. Does anybody have any idea why? They recently pushed out a snazzy new design (at least for Quora.com), but this can't be the only reason. What do people think?

[0] https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F0bm8t1r

Re: Ask HN: Why is Quora popular all of a sudden?

#2
They did a very good job attracting core early contributors who wrote unique great content and then it snowballed. Reading answers posted by the top 10 contributors is just fun. All content is SEO-friendly. Much of it is authoritative and Google loves authoritative content. There is a setting to make my content appear as anonymous to search engines, but many of us associate our names with our content.

Most of Quora's content is evergreen. They improved question merging recently and that resulted in a high concentration of high quality answers to popular questions. Quora's management calls them canonical questions. The ask2answer flow also improved. You can now find people who can answer your questions. That feature was previously under-developed and didn't work very well.

Quora's top contributors enjoy the virtuous cycle. We write answers and people upvote them, which introduces other readers to us. Our audiences are massive. I only have about 250,000 views per month and about 5500 followers, but some other writers have several million per month and more than 20,000 followers.

Quora will collapse answers that are highly upvoted but incorrect. This helps with site quality and likely pleases Google.

I am one of about 800 Quora's Top Writers ( http://quora.com/Leonid-S.-Knyshov ) if you have any specific questions.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Quora popular all of a sudden?

#3
In addition to wiseleo's comment, the key thing I think they got right was the weekly digest. It's never too frequent, it's relative, interesting, and fresh.

It was important to get the digest right because it granted Quora permission to keep getting user's attention even when away from the site (push vs pull) and also gave users a 'takeaway' - either information or topics of discussion to debate with friends through real conversation or an email forward.

This feature lets them have high retention rates and increases word-of-mouth to gain new users.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Quora popular all of a sudden?

#5
post #3

In addition to wiseleo's comment, the key thing I think they got right was the weekly digest. It's never too frequent, it's relative, interesting, and fresh. It was important to get the digest right because it granted Quora permission to keep getting user's attention even when away from the site (push vs pull) and also gave users a 'takeaway' - either information or topics of discussion to debate with friends through…

This so much. I usually unsubscribe very fast from these sort of emails - I accidentally left a checkbox marked when I signed up to read an article and it actually got me hooked. Lots of good material.

I would love to read an article about how to create such digest emails. Typically they are truly terrible but they managed to make it interesting.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Quora popular all of a sudden?

#6
post #5
post #3

In addition to wiseleo's comment, the key thing I think they got right was the weekly digest. It's never too frequent, it's relative, interesting, and fresh. It was important to get the digest right because it granted Quora permission to keep getting user's attention even when away from the site (push vs pull) and also gave users a 'takeaway' - either information or topics of discussion to debate with friends through…

This so much. I usually unsubscribe very fast from these sort of emails - I accidentally left a checkbox marked when I signed up to read an article and it actually got me hooked. Lots of good material. I would love to read an article about how to create such digest emails. Typically they are truly terrible but they managed to make it interesting.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why is Quora popular all of a sudden?

#7
post #3

In addition to wiseleo's comment, the key thing I think they got right was the weekly digest. It's never too frequent, it's relative, interesting, and fresh. It was important to get the digest right because it granted Quora permission to keep getting user's attention even when away from the site (push vs pull) and also gave users a 'takeaway' - either information or topics of discussion to debate with friends through…

Yep. I look forward to these weekly digests. Once I click a link hours go by quick.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Quora popular all of a sudden?

#8
On the contrary I've been there less and less. There was a time where I was looking to contribute but the website is flooded with fake users generated questions. I guess they have to do that to fake the growth and attract more people but it just felt empty then...

Re: Ask HN: Why is Quora popular all of a sudden?

#10
I think I was on the site yesterday. Went there through a link on twitter and clicked a link on that page. I was presented with the dreaded 'sign up to see' overlay dark pattern.

PS: I deleted my account sometimes back because I thought they used too many dark patterns to my taste at the time.

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