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I have to admit, I just don’t feel the love on Quora. To bring you up to speed if you’re one of the nine humans left who isn’t gaga over it, let me bring you up to speed. In a nutshell, Quora is a site where registered users ask questions and other people answer them and yet other people chime in with comments, clarifications, and ratings.
Sounds like just about any other board on the net, right? The difference seems to be that the amount of hype and excitement has brought a very broad slice of respondents together. Ask a question about Dropbox and you may get responses from the founder, the founder’s mother, and half of Dropbox’s coding team.
That’s the good. The not so good is that it is an incredibly tight, insular, community. New comers are not exactly discouraged, but the learning curve is very steep. Everything from a confusing layout, non intuitive search function, and a remarkably well established set of norms, make diving in a rather daunting proposition.
I honestly don’t know how much time and effort I want to invest in Quora. I remind myself that I felt much the same about Facebook, Twitter, and texting, back in the day. I’m keeping an open mind for now.
There has been a good discussion taking place among my friends on Twitter. Due the limitations of Twitter, I have invited them to bring the chat here. Anyone else reading this is welcome to weigh in too. I’ve extremely interested in your opinion!
I love twitter. The limitations of length are frustrating but that is what blogs are good for. :)
ReplyDeleteI admit to spending a little time on Quora. Each time I've been on, I've not found anything of any use nor anything original. Too many answers were taken from other sources without citing them- maybe a "from wiki this.." but no link or naming of the original article.
The searching is horrible, the questions blah, the comments worse-- maybe it has just been my experience. However, I've not heard any of my "connected" friends singing any praises for it- the only positives I've heard are from articles promoting it.
Your mentioning that the owner/dev team could be responding to questions makes me wonder-- why are they not using twitter or their own support sites where their effort would pay off greater and they would have control over their information and be able to validated users.
Quora reminds me of Second Life-- it's there but I can count on one hand how many people I know who have been active there.
Elizabeth, I think you are spot on. Everyone is talking about it and everyone wants to be know as a booster, but how many people really use it? Reminds me of how we all "loved" jazz music and Coors, back in the day! :-)
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