We launched Views a couple weeks ago to offer a new way of discovering content on Quora and to let writers get a sense of who they can reach through Quora. While many were really interested in these new stories, we also got a lot of feedback that people weren’t comfortable having what they viewed shared broadly with people following them. So we’re going to stop showing stories in feed about what people are viewing.

Om Malik wrote for GigaOM on the troubling aspects of the “Views” feature, which was launched August 1 and showed when a user had seen a particular 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.

Under the new “Views,” users did have the option to turn off this feature, and it only tracked topics they were following, not those found through search. But it seems general dislike of the new feature resonated with Quora. In the blog post, Quora explained that it would continue to track “views from feed, topic pages you follow and clicks on digest emails,” but not display in the main feed which posts were read by individual users.

This post was updated at 6:55 p.m. to clarify where Quora will stop showing stories about what users are reading.

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The “crowdsourced” question-and-answer site Quora raised more than a few eyebrows on Monday when it closed a new $50-million round of financing that values the fledgling company at $400 million, despite a conspicuous lack of scale when it comes to users. Is this just another example of the bubble-style funding rounds that have made Instagram and Pinterest the talk of the VC business, or a sign of how much power the “Facebook mafia” has in Silicon Valley? Or is Quora really onto something that could potentially turn into a multibillion-dollar idea?

Quora has more or less admitted that it doesn’t really need the $50 million it just finished raising, at least not yet. Co-founder Adam D’Angelo said (on Quora, of course) that more than half of the Series A funding round of $11 million the startup raised in 2010 is still sitting in the bank, unused. So why raise that much money at all? As Om has noted, one reason Quora did so is simply that it could — there was apparently plenty of interest, and the company wound up with financing from original Facebook investor Peter Thiel, among others.

Raising money is easy for Quora, so why not do it?

This is the startup version of the old adage “make hay while the sun shines,” and when two of your co-founders are Facebook alumni — Adam D’Angelo was the chief technology officer of the social network, and Charlie Cheever oversaw the development of Facebook’s “open graph” platform — there is plenty of hay to be made, especially since both founders are likely to become extremely wealthy when Facebook goes public (more than a third of the $50 million that Quora raised reportedly came from D’Angelo himself). More than anything, VCs love to give money to people who don’t need it.

D’Angelo has said that one of the reasons Quora raised the funding is so that it would have more “runway,” or room to prove itself and its concept before it has to start making money. And it’s clear, based on interviews with the founders, that the company sees what it is building as a potentially world-changing idea. Both seem devoted to it not because they believe it will be easy to flip or sell for billions of dollars (which they don’t really need), but because they think there is an interesting problem worth solving. As Cheever told me in 2010:

We’re not really focused on making money right now. I think if we can solve the problem we are trying to solve, we will find a way to make money.

In a nutshell, that problem is how to aggregate or crowdsource expertise on a wide variety of topics efficiently, and it’s one that any number of startups and services have tried to tackle, all the way from Yahoo Answers and Ask.com to Formspring, Reddit and Stack Exchange. And most have failed: Yahoo Answers and others have degenerated into cesspools of uselessness and spam, while companies like Aardvark disappeared inside Google and other acquirers, never to be seen again. Facebook launched its own Questions service in 2010, but there’s no sign that many people are using it much.

Among those who have tried to attack the problem from a different angle are sites like Demand Media’s eHow, which pays writers to come up with articles that contain some kind of expertise about a topic. Interestingly enough, eHow was built by Josh Hannah — who bought it in 2004 and built it into a major player before selling it to Demand Media, and is also an investor in an open-source spinoff called WikiHow. Hannah, now a partner with the venture-capital fund Matrix Partners, is an investor in Quora’s latest financing round.

Wikipedia is the model, but can Quora mimic its success?

Despite all the failures, there is one obvious example of a successful crowdsourced knowledge base, used by hundreds of millions of web surfers daily: Wikipedia. More than a decade after it was originally launched, the site is one of the top 10 most-visited web destinations on the Internet with 15 billion pageviews per month. And even more unlikely, Wikipedia has accomplished this feat without raising any venture-capital funding whatsoever, relying solely on donations and charitable funding.

The two sites have somewhat different approaches: Wikipedia asks users to contribute links and verified facts to articles that are designed to be a one-stop source of information about a topic — contributors are explicitly not allowed to state opinions based on their personal knowledge. Quora, however, tries to get those with knowledge to answer questions about specific topics, and then the community gets to vote on which answer they like best. Both sites have strict rules about what kinds of content can be posted, to avoid the Yahoo Answers problem. As a user of the site, I’ve found the quality of the answers to be consistently pretty high.

One of the main things that has helped Wikipedia grow as quickly as it has is the fact that it ranks extremely highly in Google search results, since it is seen by the search giant as an unbiased source of factual information. Given that kind of traffic, Wikipedia could easily generate hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising revenues if it added some innocuous banner advertisements to its pages (something it refuses to consider). And some Quora supporters believe that results from the site could benefit from the same phenomenon, especially as Google looks for more social signals about information.

So the ingredients of a compelling story are there: founders who have their eye on a big vision, who aren’t motivated solely by a quick flip for cash, and who are trying to build a Wikipedia-style global knowledge database powered by individual input from experts. The fact that Quora’s usage numbers seem a little lackluster is the only fly in the ointment for believers — but then, there was a time when Wikipedia wasn’t really a household name either.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr user Mark Strozier

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Here at TheAppleBlog, we spend all day working on how-tos and tutorials to help you get the most out of your Apple products. But then we thought: Maybe we should ask you what you need to know.

We’ve come up with a new idea that we’re calling Ask TAB. Once a month, we’re going to run a post asking you for ideas. If there’s something Apple-related you wish you knew how to do, or do more easily — from the basics like rearranging your Mac’s Dock to advanced topics such as setting up file sharing between a Mac and a PC — leave a comment below. We’ll go through all the suggestions, assign a bunch to writers and post the articles throughout August.

The more of you who get involved and ask questions, the better this will work. Since Lion has just been released, why not ask a question about the latest version of OS X? Post anything that comes to mind. If we’ve run an article on it, we’ll point you in the right direction with a link to something from our huge archive of content.

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Facebook has redesigned its Questions feature, in what seems to be an admission that the original version wasn’t getting much traction. The new version launched Thursday, and will gradually be introduced to all users over the next few months. The original feature tried to connect people by letting them ask questions with any Facebook user — even a complete stranger — who shared an interest in the topic. The redesign takes the complete opposite approach and is aimed at making it easy for friends to answer questions. The move seems designed in part to set the Facebook feature apart from a number of popular Q&A services such as Quora.

The original version of Questions was rolled out to a small group of users last year. Facebook project manager Adrian Graham wouldn’t say exactly how many, but said it was a fairly small percentage of the social network’s user base. Those beta testers will be the first to get the upgrade, although others will be able to opt-in to the new version through the Facebook Questions page, and anyone who answers a question posted by a friend will also be invited to join the new service.

Graham said when Questions first launched, the focus was “on connecting you to people you didn’t know” who might share an interest in the topic of the question. So if you asked about hotels in San Francisco, the site would show the question to users who had expressed an interest in that by including travel or hotels or San Francisco on their profiles, favorites and fan pages. That made it seem pretty similar to what was being offered by sites like Quora — which was founded by former Facebook CTO Adam D’Angelo — and, at one point, there appeared to be some bad blood between the two sites.

Graham says the new version of Questions takes “the complete opposite” approach, and tries to make it easy for friends to answer questions from other friends, regardless of whether they have already expressed an interest in that topic. In addition to posting a simple answer, Facebook shows what other people in a person’s social network have answered, and allows users to simply pick one of those responses and add their votes to it.

The new version of Questions is also designed to take advantage of the viral nature of the giant social network by making it easier for users to share questions and answers with their social graph — something the original iteration didn’t do, Graham admitted. “This version is much more similar to the way questions commonly get answered,” he said. “You ask a friend and then they say ‘Oh, I know someone who knows the answer to that’ and they pass it on.” There’s also a poll-style function that lets you ask a question and provide some sample answers for people to vote on.

The changes appear to be designed in part to set Facebook’s feature apart from Quora, but also from Twitter — which many people use as a source of answers to common questions about where to eat or what to buy. “There are lots of places on the Internet where you can get answers from people you don’t know,” said Graham, “but there aren’t many places where you can quickly get answers from your friends.”

If anything, the changes make it obvious that the focus of the original version of Questions was a mistake, because it didn’t take advantage of the single most powerful thing that Facebook has going for it: an intimate connection to your entire social graph.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Colin Kinner

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What Can You Do On Quora?

In simple terms, you can ask a question on Quora and include some details for your question; comment on a question; answer a question; add a followup question, or flag a question. You can also publish a post to Quora, but for now, let’s just focus on the Q&A portion of the site.

Using Quora can be very confusing at first. Finding a topic, for example, isn’t immediately obvious or intuitive. Your only option seems to be “Add Question” in the field that appears at the top of the page. If you start entering a question, the site begins looking for questions with similar words, presenting them in a drop-down menu.

To find a topic, you need to enter a keyword, rather than a question. This will cause keyword matches to appear in the drop-down menu. You can then select the closest match, without having to click on the “Add Question” button. You can find a person or reference in the same manner.

To “filter” information from Quora, you can follow a topic or question, then receive notifications on your Quora home page about these activities. You can also specify 40 different activities that will trigger emails to you. While the granularity of settings is commendable, it can be intimidating to a new user.

How to Get Your Quora Questions Noticed

I’ve had extremely low response to my questions so far. The most-answered question I’ve posted had to do with relating Twitter to current events; the question was more asking for opinion than factual information.

Here are a few things you can do to improve exposure for your question:

1. Ask compelling questions where others can showcase their knowledge and experience.
2. Add topics to your question to tie it in to relevant areas on the site. Once your question has been posted, click the link above it.
3. Share your question with your network, through the Twitter and Facebook buttons on the right side of your question’s page; via Quora’s inbox to share with someone specific; through your other social networks as updates; and even via email.
4. Answer other people’s questions thoughtfully to build your reputation and profile on the site.

Over time, it seems like your valuable contributions on Quora will bolster the chances of your own questions being seen and answered.

Will Quora Be Useful for Work?

At the moment, many people are probably participating in Quora because it’s been getting a lot of notice. Until recently, Quora relied on a small group to ask and answer questions. At that stage, there wasn’t as much noise, so it was easier to see new questions. There was probably even a bit of “peer pressure” or reputation-building. But since the new year, all heck has broken loose.

In actual use, getting your answer addressed — and in a quality, thoughtful manner — seems to require:

• the “right” people noticing it or being notified of it,
• being posted at the “right” time, and
• providing the “right” incentive for others with appropriate training or skills to respond quickly and thoughtfully.

Having a strong social network may help expand the reach of your question, but only if your network is paying attention, and all the other variables are in alignment.

In a recent post, Mathew Ingram asked if Quora can survive its growing popularity. Quora has features and algorithms that could help create the environment needed to generate quality responses. It would be a shame if Quora turned out to be based more on popularity than relevance or importance.

Like anything that relies on the serendipity of the right people, the right time, and the right question, Quora may not necessarily be “useful.”  Or it may be folly to rely too much on Quora, or such sites as Yahoo Answers, Mahalo Answers, ChaCha, LinkedIn Answers, and Aardvark, for any serious work. I’m skeptical that sites powered by the public can provide fast and reliable information, particularly for work-related needs.

What do you think of Quora? Has it helped you accomplish any actual work?

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Format

Choosing the right format and delivery method for your feedback form will have a profound effect on how often you actually get it back filled out.

Personally, I like to use an Adobe PDF form because it’s easy for the client to use: simple, portable, compatible across platforms and distributable both online or off. If you don’t have a copy of Acrobat, you can use OpenOffice Writer to create PDF forms instead. An HTML form is a good alternative, though if you don’t have any HTML experience it might be more difficult to put one together. As a final option, be ready and willing to call and conduct your survey on the phone directly with a stakeholder, since this may be the only way to ensure you get some kind of feedback.

Question Composition

As for the questions you ask, you may first want to decide how many you’re going to use. For the sake of ease of use I generally ask between 10 and 20 questions, depending on the length and type of engagement. You don’t want to use too many, since you risk exasperating your client, but if you use too few, your results won’t be very meaningful.

The nature and wording of each question will also determine how meaningful the answers are. The most important thing to consider when composing your questions is to consider how you might act based on the answers you receive. If, for example, you ask, “Was the project I delivered what you anticipated receiving upon completion?” with the client answering on a scale of one to five, the answers will be meaningless without additional questions. Regardless of whether you score high or low, you won’t know how to change your practice based upon those results.

It’s better to ask more specific questions like, “How satisfied were you with any pre-project materials received?” since this points to a specific area that you can act to improve. As a rule of thumb, ask yourself what you would do following a positive or negative response to each question you come up with. If you can’t come up with anything, then it’s probably not a good question.

Breaking your questions up into categories (with subheadings) is also a good idea, as it will focus your client and, again, help make your results more meaningful. You also might want to ask for a general measure of satisfaction for the project as a whole, just to see if your client’s micro and macro observations are consistent.

Finally, always leave space for extra comments, context for answers given, etc. Whether or not it gets used, respondents will appreciate the opportunity to speak outside of your prescribed boundaries.

Scale

Form design is one area where you don’t want to get too far off the beaten track, because it’s a genre that people are already very much acquainted with. You can use that familiarity to your advantage. Using the typical answer scale of scores from one to five, for instance, will give your respondents instant, easy access, because it’s something they’ve seen in many different forms before.

Of course, that still leaves choices about how to use that scale. Personally, I use the one to five scale differently depending on what kind of feedback I’m looking for. If I want something that I will be using as a reference for future engagements, for instance, I might orient the numbers from highest to lowest, which seems to encourage people to choose higher numbers overall. If I want more criticism, because I’m using the survey results primarily for internal, professional development purposes, I’ll use the reverse tactic and order the numbers from lowest to highest.

Designing a good feedback form is not easy, and you’ll no doubt encounter many competing opinions on how best to do it. A good tip, though, is to always offer some kind of incentive to fill out the form, whether it be a discount on the client’s invoice, some kind of free service like a client-sector specific research report, or a charitable donation. Believe me, feedback is well worth the investment.

How do you gather client feedback?

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Try the forums. For anyone who works on the web, the free forums at W3Schools are terrific for getting speedy responses from people who know what they’re talking about. There is a “General” forum for questions of any type, but most of the popular forums are on web development and design topics. You’ll find forums on HTML, JavaScript, using Flash and other multimedia tools online, and more. Also, as I’ve written before, the free tutorials at W3Schools’ home page are really outstanding.

Protonic.com. I’ve found many good answers to my tech questions at protonic.com. It’s populated by a large community of volunteers who answer questions, and answers usually come back quite quickly, although you sometimes have to wait a few hours for a question to be “picked up” by the community. You can ask questions on anything from HTML to what hardware to buy and get good responses.

You must log in and provide a valid email address to ask a question. The service is completely free.

Open source questions? If you use any open source applications, from Firefox, to the GIMP graphics application, to Linux, to many more titles, you can always ask a question at OStatic. Just log in and click on “Question” in the toolbar above the OStatic blog to type your question in. OStatic is partly a blog, but also a database-driven site with an active community of open source users. Usually, they provide excellent answers to questions on open source apps and platforms.

Hit the help desk. At AskMeHelpDesk, you can get free answers to tech questions. The site houses many categories for questions, and not all of them are on technology topics, but there are many experts available who can answer questions on everything form web development to smartphones.

Weegy. Recently, I wrote a post about Weegy, which is a human expert-driven search site. I’ve asked many complex technology-related questions of the experts there, and the free answers are often very good. At the site, you post a question and wait for an expert to claim it. Usually, answers come back very quickly.

While the answers you get from these resources will usually be high quality, it’s important to fact-check them. Using Google, you can usually establish the accuracy or inaccuracy of any given answer. You can also post the same question in multiple forums and compare the answers you get.

What free resouces do you turn to when you have a tech question?

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From the press release they sent out today, it looks like pricing will be around $10.95 a month and my guess is that’s if you pay annually in one lump-sum. With an account, you’ll have Direct Push services right from the server for your e-mail, contacts, and calendar events to your iPhone. There’s also the Remote Wipe function to delete data from your device. Why would a consumer need that? Just ask Robert Scoble… he knows why.

If you’re new to the "Microsoft Exchange" world, consider the "Hosted Exchange 101" article we put together last year; it gives you the high-level view of what the service is and why you might want it.

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1. As part of your preparation, search out previous interviews the guest has done. Look for topics “the guest really likes to talk about,” advises Miller, and the topics that “fall flat.” The goal: To find a balance between what your audience wants to hear and also what the guest wants to talk about.

2. Create a list of 10 questions to ask the guest. Next, ask a fan of the guest to put together 10 questions. “Then combine them to come up with a list of 10 burning questions,” she says. The goal: To ask the questions your listeners or readers would want to ask.

3. Ask open-ended questions. Don’t pose questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no. As Miller explains, “You’re looking for stories and surprises.” The goal: To get your guest to tell a story.

Potential lead-ins include: “Why did you decide to…” “What was the biggest reason you…” “When did you realize that…” “Where were you when…” “What experience did you draw on for…” “Tell me about…”

4. Let your research show in the way you pose your questions. As an example, Miller cited an interview Fresh Air’s Terry Gross did with Johnny Cash in 1997, in which she said, “When you got to Memphis, Elvis Presley had already recorded, ‘That’s All Right.’ Sam Phillips had produced him for his records, Sun Records. You called Sam Phillips and asked him for an audition. Did it take a lot of nerve to make that phone call?” The goal: To absorb the facts of your subject’s background and find ways to drill down to make the topics come alive.

5. If your guest wants to see the list of questions beforehand, politely decline. Miller suggests in such cases sending general topic areas. (I’ve found this approach to satisfy even the most intractable of PR people.) The goal: To avoid having the interview sound like it’s being read from a script.

6. The day before the interview, send an email reminder with four key pieces of information: a) Confirm the scope of the interview; b) Confirm the date and time, including the time zone; c) Clarify the procedure — you’re going to call on Skype; you’re going to call their land line; d) Confirm that they will be on a land line — no cell phone or cordless phone. (This latter point is less important for non-broadcast interviews.) The goal: To avoid simple and obvious glitches.

7. Start the interview with softball questions. Ask their name, title, courtesy questions about how the flight was, or what their role in the company is. The goal: To get your guest warmed up.

8. Don’t stick to the list of questions you’ve created. Here, advises Miller, “Shut up and listen.” Has somebody just mentioned that they have a favorite tool they like to use in a given instance? Respond, “Really? Tell me more!” The goal: To get examples and anecdotes that will engage listeners and readers.

9. Don’t assume you’re the only one in the world who doesn’t understand something your guest is talking about. If your interview subject is using “corporate-speak,” said Miller, “ask again. ‘Explain it to me like I’m five, or explain it to me like I’m your mother’” The goal: To have the guest explain the concept until you can understand it. Your readers will appreciate the effort.

You can download an outline of Miller’s entire presentation here.

Do you have a favorite interview story or tip to share?

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