GigaOM » Marc Bodnick

Quora keeps searching for growth, this time with user-generated product reviews

Eliza Kern — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 21:00:03 +0000

In searching for a way to connect with users, some companies gear up for infrequent but splashy updates, hoping that dramatic shifts will catch people’s attention. With Quora, the company is clearly trying a different tactic: roll out new features or products every month, and see what sticks.

This month, the company is announcing a feature that will allow users to leave structured reviews (with a one star to five star rating), adding structure to the traditional feedback people leave on the Q&A site for products like books, TV shows, cars, or tech hardware.

In the past eight months we’ve seen the company launch embeddable threads, an Android app, designated power user status, an “online now” feature, a blogging platform, and a rich text editor for mobile, to name a few. The company took an significant $50 million in venture funding last May, and is clearly under a good deal of pressure to prove traction and adoption (landing it in hot water last month as a result). So embracing a product-driven approach to growth is understandable.

As with all of the company’s updates, the new review features attempts to highlight the quality the company is known for generating in its question and answer pages. Reviews would certainly make the site more even more SEO-friendly by surfacing reviews for popular shows like House of Cards when someone is Googling for information about the show. So it’s a natural progression for the company, although a review feature certainly isn’t unique to Quora.

“I think the biggest benefit is that it provides structure and categorization to this type of knowledge,” said Quora’s Marc Bodnick, who handles marketing for the company. He emphasized that Quora is not as interested in encouraging reviews of local businesses or restaurants, as sites like Yelp have a strong hold on that type of content. “The big reason why we’re excited to launch his product is to signal to readers and writers that there’s one place to write this type of question. So we’re hoping that if users think to themselves that if they want to write something about House of Cards, there will be a place to do that.”

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Quora chips away at getting more answers with “online now” feature

Eliza Kern — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 22:30:59 +0000

For Quora, the online question and answer forum populated by geeks and trivia devotees alike, the site is really only as good as the answers it provides. With much of the online consumer world moving to mobile (and Quora moving with it), the company is trying to tackle one question: How do you keep users on the site and answering question in real-time on their phones? The company’s executives hope part of that answer comes with their new “online now” feature, debuting Monday that will mark frequent Quora users as available or likely to answer questions in real-time when they’re online.

“It helps you satisfy your curiosity quickly and settles answers of what’s on your mind,” said Marc Bodnick, Quora’s product and business executive. “And it’s really important in the mobile world, because often the questions you want to know, you want to know soon or right now.”

The company explained how the “online now” feature works in a blog post on its site:

Online Now shows you when people with knowledge about your question are online and available to answer, and shows others when you are available to answer. Ask to Answer suggestions identify people who are likely to provide a good answer because they have answered similar questions in the past. Starting today, if one or more of these people are active on Quora now, you’ll see an Online Now label and a blue button prompting you to ask the person to answer your question.

Users who don’t want to be targeted with questions can turn off the “online now” feature in their settings, an option the company should be sensitive toward after it received backlash for showing which questions people were reading and viewing earlier this year.

The company has been making moves recently to keep users engaged on the site and spreading Quora posts across the web, marking Quora power users as “top users” to recognize their contributions, rolling out Android apps for its many new mobile users, allowing bloggers to more easily embed content across the web, and trying to show which posts have been read by users. The company has plenty of cash while it works on its business model, having recently raised $50 million in May, but presumably keeping users engaging with the site is key to success.

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Quora makes its content more quotable with embedded threads

Eliza Kern — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 18:00:01 +0000

Looking to quote someone’s post from Quora? The company announced Monday that users will now be able to use embed codes from the site for content they wish to quote, making it easier to spread Quora around the web.

“Folks with a lot of drive and determination will do this anyway, but now we’re making it easier for almost anyone,” said Marc Bodnick, a product and business executive at Quora. He said users will be able to pick which material to quote and then choose the size of the embedded material to put on the page.

Bodnick thought the new feature was partially inspired both by Twitter’s embedded tweets as well as the Kindle highlight feature. Quora is hopeful that creating an easier way to quote and then track content from the site will benefit journalists and bloggers already quoting that material, he said. In addition to better formatting, Bodnick explained that it will provide those users with a form of analytics, since quoted material will display when it has been embedded elsewhere.

Quora is a question and answer site founded by former Facebook employees in 2009 that has become a strong competitor to sites like Wikipedia. It allows users to search for topics, questions, or people, as well as follow information they’re interested in. Users can “upvote” answers they like, creating a form of crowdsourcing in answering the questions.

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Thanks to Quora, now you can’t read anonymously

Om Malik — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 20:04:51 +0000

Quora, which I believe is one of the most over-hyped startups, has introduced Views on Quora, which essentially shares which users have read each post. This is no different than the passive sharing that has been promoted by Facebook or Path. Now on a closed network like Path, which is based entirely on intimate relationships, I can understand passive sharing. After all, if you have seen my photo or a check-in and I know that, it is okay because you are on my approved list.

However, the kind of sharing Quora is promoting doesn’t jive with me. And neither does it sit well with author Jeff Jarvis, who despite years of advocacy about the benefits of living in public isn’t a fan of this view feature.

I'm Mr. Public but I don't like Quora sharing who reads what. Shouldn't it operate as a library? No crime in lurking. allthingsd.com/20120801/quora…—
Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) August 01, 2012

While it is understandable for social services to use passive sharing — after all, it quantifies the act of content creation and/or content sharing –but I do feel that anonymous reading has its value.

Quora exec Marc Bodnick tells AllThingsD’s Liz Gannes:

“People on Quora are writing to be read. What we’re telling you is that Quora is a distribution mechanism that works.”

Like many others on the Internet, I too get lured into clicking headlines that are intriguing only to find myself on a list or a news item that only infuriates me. So to see my name associated with that page is disingenuous. Also, if I spent two seconds on a page, does it really count as a “view?”

Liz, who has written about the death of online lurking, wrote in a post last month:

“Passive becomes active. Lean back becomes lean forward. Stalking becomes, well, showing you’re interested in someone.”

In other words, the so-called Quora view that is generated is a false endorsement. What if I have landed on the the post accidentally or have been lured there? I see this is a curse of Facebook, which has propagated the positive bias syndrome on the web thanks to its Like button. It is not surprising — Quora was started by ex-Facebookers, who like the social-giant itself don’t seem to put real human context around the data signals. (It is not the only bad behavior they have carried over from Facebook.)

How to get rid of Views: Click on your profile icon (top right hand corner) and hit settings in the drop down menu. Find Views (just above Deactivate option) in the right hand column. Click and chose no. Views are turned off.

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