
Quora Launches Blogging Platform - marbemac
http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/23/quora-launches-blogging-platform-with-mobile-text-editor-to-give-every-author-a-built-in-audience/
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bobsy
Suprised to find I can access blogs without signing in. I used to enjoy Quora.
I would browse, then sign in and comment when I felt I had something relevant
to add. Unfortunately the forced login to view content and Quora automatically
posting recently read articles onto Facebook made me stop visiting.

These blogs won't draw me back. Many topics have aggregators you can submit
you blog to. I would imagine building a readership on Quora will be no easier
than running a self hosted blog.

~~~
doktrin
This. Quora is probably the single most invasive site I have ever visited,
short of something engineered with literally malicious intent. I will probably
never significantly engage with it for this very reason.

I am incredibly wary of even clicking a Quora link, and when I do it's
typically from within the context of an incognito browsing session.

edited : It's a shame, because the _content_ itself can be quite good. I have
simply lost confidence in the site, as I do not believe they respect my
privacy one iota.

~~~
wilfra
Really don't get all the Quora hate on HN. I usually agree with HN on things
but on this I'm the polar opposite. I love Quora (and HN).

~~~
Steko
"Really don't get all the Quora hate on HN."

I'm not sure what's hard to get exactly. How would you like it if Google
forced you to sign in to search and then one day told the whole world what you
were searching for? Yes they backtracked on the latter but it's fucking
ridiculous that it would have even went live in the first place. It makes me
never want to sign in to Quora again. And since you can't even browse the site
effectively without signing in, the whole thing is useless.

~~~
wilfra
Every platform has things about it which are not perfect and every startup
makes mistakes. Many on HN seem to be either completely unaware of or
purposely ignore all of the other amazing things about Quora, and that's a
shame.

~~~
rhizome
The founders are ex-Facebook, they know what kinds of features they're making
before they launch them. I wouldn't be so quick to allow them the garage-
startup space to make these kinds of mistakes. Consider the source, fruit of
the tree, and all that.

~~~
wilfra
Agreed.

Like Facebook, it's a great product created by people who have made some
questionable privacy decisions. However whenever Facebook is discussed on HN
95% of the comments are not negative.

I'm not saying Quora is perfect and above criticism, but there are a lot of
great things about it and its not so bad as to warrant the extreme and near-
absolute criticism it gets on HN.

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hkmurakami
_> Quora’s new blogging tools will appeal to two demographics. The first are
people without any web celebrity already. Quora’s Kah Keng Tay writes that
Quora blogs suit people who “(1) don’t have a big, established online presence
already and (2) don’t want to do the time-intensive, heavy lifting of
marketing their blog and slowly building an audience._

It's a double edged sword, since (1) might accelerate your path to internet
stardom by a little bit, but by taking (2), you lose the control and a large
part of the benefit that comes from achieving internet stardom (if that's you
thing) in the first place.

If you are looking for marketing enhancers for your online blogging, you're
usually at least partly considering some ends beyond increasing eyeballs
(affiliate ads, consulting leads, ebook sales, etc.) [1]. Using Quora as your
primary platform puts a damper on the output of these 'ends', and using it as
a secondary "Crosspost" location fragments your audience and increases your
labor overhead anyways.

Addendum: Benefit (2) is largely moot since its upfront cost reduction for a
blogger is not going to be significantly larger than Tumblr, if at all.

[1] If you weren't at least considering these things, then you'd probably be
happy staying on your own domain.

~~~
ma2rten
I saw quite a few consultants or e.g. lawyers already post on quora to
establish themselves as experts in their field. I could imagine that this is
interesting for them.

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gergles
Oh great, will I have to log in to read blog entries beyond the first one?

~~~
codezero
No

~~~
znt
Not until they build enough traction.

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ececconi
Quora really needs to fix this.

I just launched my blog at <http://ececconi.quora.com> and then opened up an
incognito window on Chrome. Navigating to the site took me to the Quora signup
homepage. I have to enter in the address again into the bar and press enter to
navigate to the blog.

One of the things I dislike most about Quora is how the website obscures the
content in attempt to get more people to sign up for it.

~~~
jusben1369
<http://ghost.quora.com/Why-we-ask-people-to-sign-in>

~~~
paulgb
As an early user, I started contributing _less_ when I realized this was
happening. Why should I contribute to something that's not going to be
accessible by non-users?

Wikipedia didn't need to wall off content to grow. Nor did stackoverflow,
everything2, urbandictionary, and basically every user-generated content site
since expert sexchange.

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jerrya
Quora hate aside, given the supposed reasoning behind this,

 _The Internet is full of experts with no one reading their insights. It takes
a lot of work to build a following. So today Quora launches a blogging
platform that automatically distributes posts to its Q &A site users who
follow related topics. Thanks to its upvote system, home page feed, and a new
mobile text editor, anyone with something brilliant to blog, even first-
timers, can find a readership._

I guess it's too bad Quora didn't pickup Posterous.

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sergiotapia
So, how do I create my blog on Quora? Or is it invite only?

Edit: Create your blog here: <http://www.quora.com/blog/add>

Edit 2: Won't be using this. I can't write code snippets using a monospace
font. What gives?

<http://sergiotapia.quora.com/adsf>

~~~
testing8888
You can write code blocks using the [code] tag.

E.g.

[code]

Multiline

code

[/code]

OR

This is some inline code: [code] /usr/bin/xyz [/code]

~~~
codezero
Also, it supports syntax highlighting using [code=language]

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ivan_ah
I am kind of disappointed that you cannot use LaTeX math in the entries. On
quora it JUSTWORKED so I was hoping that it would work on their blogging
platform but nope: $\sin\theta$ just sits there in its dollar signs...

Feature request: math support.

~~~
testing8888
Have you tried using:

[math] \sin \theta [/math]

(instead of $)

~~~
ivan_ah
Thx. It works, though the line height seems kind of weird.

<http://topicmodels.quora.com/Test-post>

Still kind of cool to create a blog in two clicks ;)

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ggordan
This seems like quite an interesting development. Isn't this method of
'blogging' something similar to whatMedium is doing? I wonder if they'll start
allowing anyone to post ahead of schedule.

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capex
The blog layout didn't have to exactly copy the default Wordpress layout. But
the ease of use is awesome in terms of selecting topics to write about,
showing the count of people following that topic. Quora would be a much more
frequented place with blogs being visible without signing up.

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benatkin
<http://wordpress.org/>

