Comments on: Quora wants to go head-to-head with Wikipedia — and maybe Google too

By: Stavros Rougas

Stavros Rougas — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 02:06:47 +0000

You were too kind in analyzing Quora Matthew.

While I’m somewhat active on Quora and I like what they are doing, it’s just too easy to forget it exists. It may be too broad to get a needed niche audience to establish itself.

Stackoverflow is another interesting model that has developed a core understanding of the relationships it is fostering and has built and tested it with great success. It then rolled it out across different verticals.

Quora’s current model makes sense if they are acquired by say Google as Google could afford to play a longer term game and find non monetary value. Reminds me of Google’s purchase of BufferBox, great idea but it’s a huge undertaking as it requires a lot to establish the kiosks across one city alone.

I never thought Google would buy BufferBox so the value may be in acquisition not making money. That’s always a difficult business model.

By: Mick Weinstein

Mick Weinstein — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 12:02:51 +0000

It would be helpful if D’Angelo clearly articulated his vision of how Quora will differentiate itself from Wikipedia. He hints at one possibility it with the mention of experiences. I’ve found that many of the best answers on Quora were based on individuals’ remarkable experiences that they were willing to share.

By: Buck Wild

Buck Wild — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 17:53:07 +0000

What a joke these dudes are! Their website service is so poor, how did they get $50 million for that ?

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 06:22:48 +0000

This would be intersting … If there wasn’t Wikipedia already. This sounds like Encarta.

By: davidgerard

davidgerard — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 22:27:13 +0000

Not since they started using the page-blurring techniques favoured by Experts Exchange.

(Do they serve the blurred content up to search engines too?)

By: Max Reiter

Max Reiter — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 20:44:34 +0000

Quora is a great place, more addicting than FB/Twitter for me. However at this time the intention to collect knowledge doesn’t look like anything more than a wishful thinking. The way it is now = anecdotal random thoughts on random topics, that flash in the light of the current stream and than vanish. I know that all Q/As are stored somewhere, but it’s almost impossible to find something that I’ve read few days ago (unless I can remember the exact question or bookmark it – that’s what i’m doing now and it is ridiculous).

By: Pete

Pete — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 19:56:41 +0000

But they already have a blogging feature called posts that is fulled rolled out. So it wouldn’t be a “new format” right?

By: Mathew Ingram

Mathew Ingram — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 18:26:54 +0000

Yes, quite right that D’Angelo provided much of that round — should probably have mentioned that. And thanks for the er, speculation on the rationale behind the other part :-)

By: John Doe

John Doe — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 18:22:47 +0000

They raised $50M in their last round and over half of it was by D’Angelo himself because the investors aren’t bullish on it at all – the other half was commited on the condition they pivot the product.

By: Bob D

Bob D — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 17:24:24 +0000

Since Quora recently required users to register in order to simply _read_ questions and answers, I’m not terribly optimistic of their expansion chances. They clearly value their (their contributors) information too highly to expand into these aggressively competitive areas. They’ve gone from capturing value to assaulting it.