Whats Quora? And Should I Care About Another Social Media Tool?

You may have heard the rumors, the buzz, the adulation, and now the complaints. There’s a new social media tool in town and it calls itself Quora. Quora describes itself as “A continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.” While I’ve been following the Quora surface buzz for awhile, it never struck me as anything more than an interactive wiki. In fact, I secretly thought its real appeal was its non-mass adoption and use by “high-ranking” social media folks in the know, and honestly, I didn’t want to take the time to play with a hip new toy that wasn’t useful to me.  As it begins to fall from grace however, I find myself drawn to delve deeper into this seemingly web-retro tool and see what it offers the digital sphere.

Signing Up for Quora

To create my account, I chose to Sign in with Captico’s Twitter account - thinking it would work as many other Twitter log-ins or Facebook log-ins do and put me straight into the Quora world. Nope. I still had to give my REAL name (they emphasize this – even if you are acting as a company representative), my email address and create a password. (You can also sign in with your Facebook account or through a regular email address.)

I am then prompted to upload a picture (as it doesn’t pull my Twitter avatar either) and then select from some pre-cropped versions of that picture to display as my avatar.

Next Quora wants to connect me to my Facebook friends and Twitter friends (but since I “signed-in” with Twitter, I assume its already doing that for me).

Finally, like a page from Twitter, it prompts me to “Follow” Interesting Topics which will be what I see questions about. I notice that it must have pulled all kinds of info from my Twitter account as it is surfacing content very specific to the people I follow… Each time I “Follow” a Topic, a new one appears.

I now arrive at a page that looks like a Facebook newsfeed (complete with avatars) and a Trending Topics and People module that has me thinking of early Twitter.

I immediately recognize that I (Captico) follow all of these people on Twitter. (I wonder what this feed would look like if I hadn’t connected to a social media account?) So apparently a LOT of people that I’m interested in are interested in Quora. Interesting. So lets jump in.

Questions on Quora

I pick the question: Why is Dropbox more popular than other tools with similar functionality? I see that my friend Nakeva Corothers is following this question and I use Dropbox. (also, is it just me or is Quora really slow?)

The question page is similar to the layout of the primary newsfeed page and gives you a variety of options to interact with the Question and share it with Twitter and FB. The “best” answer – or the one voted up the most times – is at the top of the thread with the rest of the answers (71 in this case) listed down in order of popularity.

So far, Quora is meeting my expectations. Its similar to Answers.com or Yahoo Answers or Maholo or Stack Exchange or any other of these Community Q&A sites. Quora is more tech focused for sure and has some of the biggest players in the industry participating, but its basic functionality is like that of a retro web discussion board.

Like a wiki, it gives everyone power though. I can edit anything – title, summary, tags. I can redirect a question or even “collapse it”. Obviously if a user abuses such privileges the community will kick you out – and this has led to some of the gripes amongst Quora users. Former Quora advocate Robert Scoble says he’s “getting dozens of emails from people pissed that their questions have been changed, their answers marked ‘not helpful,’ or that they got kicked off the service altogether.” And in a case of a double-edge sword, in an attempt to banish spam, Mashable, who has the most followers on Quora, has been banned because brands aren’t allowed to use the service (their employees can though).

My feelings on Quora haven’t changed. I might go there if I had a specific question for the tech community that I didn’t get answered on twitter or through a blog on my own site, but I don’t see myself spending time there.

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Related Quora Articles Across the Web:

• The Quor-gasm shakes the social web
• Is Quora the biggest blogging innovation in 10 years?
• Let’s not have a Quor-gasm
• Why I was wrong about Quora as a blogging service …
• The Power of Quora & Why Benchmark was Right to Pay Up

Tags: Corrie Davidson, questions, quora, Social Media, social network, social networking, wiki

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Marketing, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.