Comments on: Why Robert Scoble is Both Good and Bad for Quora

By: Erik

Erik — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 12:57:48 +0000

Robert, how well the team will execute as the product meets the market is the single most important factor in which early stage company will be a success. Trying to predict winners based of beta releases without estimating who will execute better is basically a meaningless exercise.

By: Robert Scoble

Robert Scoble — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 12:14:14 +0000

I never got anything from Kyte and I never got anything from Qik, either. Qik executed better than Kyte did after I wrote those posts. I can’t predict which team will out execute the other (Qik had better UI, went for more of a personal videoconferencing thing than a video publishing thing, etc etc).

By: What Makes a Hit (Consumer) Internet Service: Tech News and Analysis «

What Makes a Hit (Consumer) Internet Service: Tech News and Analysis « — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 18:14:44 +0000

[...] the past few days, there has been a heated debate about Quora, a year-old startup, that offers a more sophisticated version of Yahoo Answers’ [...]

By: Jeff Putz

Jeff Putz — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 17:15:46 +0000

Wait… so typing something into my Chrome bar and getting an answer, which may come from a Stackexchange site, is suboptimal? You want it to be more complicated for me?

Stack is addictive as well, for the people who want the “high score,” and those people can’t fake it with poor answers since the score is awarded by people who can verify their answers. It’s a system that works exceptionally well, and the frankly the discovery mechanism is irrelevant.

By: Yuvamani

Yuvamani — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 08:19:12 +0000

First let me say StackExchange is awesome.

The problem is its a google optimized engine. Namely you search google for some problem in say jquery. You get an answer. Its great for technical and semi technical questions which have definite answers.

Quora is going down a different path. It has been designed like facebook as a communication medium. What this means is that the service is addicting to use … Like facebook.

What this means is that it is a better place for questions with non definite or nonprecise answers. And that arguably is a larger market than the market for definite or precise answers.

Here is the thing I always land up in stackexchange through google.

I always land up in quora directly. That is the difference .. and the source of the valuation.

By: Yuvamani

Yuvamani — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 08:10:04 +0000

@Alan Interesting comment on the lines of Quora is a wikipedia.

Firstly even in wikipedia, you do not have to be an “expert” to contribute. Just mine the information and refer to an expert source to back your assertion and you are good.

So does that mean that I can only answer narrow focused questions which I am an expert in ? Even Wikipedia does not have such stringent rules.

Scobles defence is that since he is a journalist he hears and over hears a lot of things which he contributes back to quora. Just like the wikipedia contributor who is referring to actual experts. Scoble’s answers are referring to experts who may not have the time to get on quora and answer questions.

How is this wrong ? And what does it mean for quora …

By: Jack

Jack — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 06:56:46 +0000

Never understood Why a lot of folks listen to Robert is beyond me. Just today Kyte was in the news : The very service Robert said will kill Qik.

http://techcrunch.com/2008/06/14/why-kytetv-will-kill-qik-and-flixwagon-in-cell-phone-video-space/

But the reality is Qik got a $100-150 Million exit (Skype) and Kyte got less than $25Million exit (KITD)

Do you guys live in some blogger echo chamber ? Who is Robert or OM or any other blogger to say which startup will be a success and which will fail ?

How much PR money/kick backs/ expensive dinners did Robert got from Kyte to say those things about Qik ?

I feel all these bloggers techcrunch gigaom robert are paid by PR folks to write all these article ..to praise or mention companies in these blog articles ..

The latest example of this is mentions of Instagram and Quora : One more mention of these two on techcrunch and gigaom and I am going to puke !

By: Nelson Hill

Nelson Hill — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 05:26:42 +0000

Quora works NOW because it is still cloistered. Subject is not Scoble, it is Quora’s alleged algorithm– it is either going to work, and change the world, or it is not and they are somewhere between doomed and redundant. If it works, Scoble’s comments will be where they belong.

By: dave

dave — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 01:05:58 +0000

i have a number of issues with the site, not the least of which is their intent to encourage users to *not* search google for simple answers or run questions against a simple store of wikipedia data….rather, they seek to promote simple questions and answers (state capitals etc) and present this as a ‘beneficial service’ for users…yes, you read that correctly, they want users to ask what color appears when you mix red and blue, but not what happens when you multiply numbers (read on)

here’s a discussion of this disingenuous approach to building their content store in an effort to monetize around wikipedia content and other common or pre-existing knowledge:
http://www.quora.com/Is-it-bad-form-to-ask-questions-on-Quora-for-which-definitive-answers-can-be-easily-found-via-search-engines-Google (adam d’angelo chimes in himself)

By: Links 1-31-11: Android wins!, Snooze your gMails, Quora | Aram Zucker-Scharff

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 22:56:59 +0000

[...] service. Then it just degenerated into how everyone hates Robert Scoble… which is really just what happens to every web [...]