Why I Believe Quora.com Will Be Big
For the past week I've been playing around with Quora.com, the social networking site de jour. Quora's allows users to post and answer questions using an easy-to-use and very well socially-integrated website. Although I've only been using it a short while, I'm convinced this service will be big. Here are my key reasons:
- Quality - I'm not quite sure how they'll manage to maintain quality, but Quora is a far cry from the troll ravaged world of Yahoo Answers. Many leading industry (mostly technology/social media/internet) commentators and playmakers have joined the site and are already answering fascinating questions.
- Bigger Questions - Some people have pointed out that other mediums are much more efficient than Quora at delivering the right answers quickly. That my be so, but I don't think that's what Quora is about necessarily. At least not yet. While you might have a much more binary question in mind when searching google, wikipedia or yahoo answers, a lot of the questions I've seen on Quora are more in depth opening not suitable to be answered with a single response but, rather, generating an entire debate.
- Interactivity - With Google/Wikipedia there's no interaction. With Quora.com both asker and answerer have profiles, and the ability to follow each other. This opens up the possibility of developing relationships and connections between users.
- Self promotion - When assessing Quora.com we need to look at the flipside of the questions, the answers and the people answering them. Quora.com provides a more appropriate environment (as compared to Yahoo Answers) for savvy technologists, and marketers to raise their profile by answering questions.
What do you think? Have I missed anything, maybe you don't agree with me. I'd love to hear your thoughts.





