
Why I Don’t Buy the Quora Hype - bretpiatt
http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/23/why-i-don%E2%80%99t-buy-the-quora-hype/
======
michaelbuckbee
Something no one else has mentioned yet (perhaps for fear of plunging down the
meta discussion rabbit hole) is the degree to which HN competes with Quora.

As a small experiment, I'd previously posed roughly the same question to both
HN and Quora.

[http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-optimum-pricing-strategy-
fo...](http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-optimum-pricing-strategy-for-a-new-
iPhone-application)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2097527>

The response from HN absolutely destroyed the response from Quora. Those links
don't even tell the whole story as I had multiple people email me directly
from the HN community to offer advice and in one case give me access to a
private iPhone application price research tool that he'd built for his own
use.

~~~
kmfrk
Your "evidence" is anecdotal. Compare this to an answer like this on Quora:
[http://www.quora.com/Venture-Capital/How-can-I-prevent-
share...](http://www.quora.com/Venture-Capital/How-can-I-prevent-shareholders-
from-taking-over-my-startup?q=how+do+I+prevent+shareholders).

There are things I'd rather ask about on HN, and the same applies to Quora.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
I think we're agreeing more than we're disagreeing. My point was mainly that
there is a large degree of overlap between the areas of discussion on the two
sites.

I'd be very interested in knowing your criteria for which site to ask what
kinds of questions.

~~~
kmfrk
You just seem(ed) very dismissive of Quora in your example. I also think that
your verbiage of "destroyed" is greatly exaggerated.

I think that, on average, you'll get a much more useful response on HN,
because there is a general feeling of how to reply and what can be done. When
you write a question on Quora, it doesn't feel like you create a discussion;
you submit a ticket you hope people will be kind enough to answer (seeing that
there is no incentive, i.e. reward, model in Quora whatsoever). The comments
for each answer are just yays, nays, and cutesy remarks.

There's a reason I don't feel comfortable calling Quora a community, because
the interaction is mainly from answerer to asker.

------
kenjackson
My problem with the Quora hype is that its only in the TechCrunch echo
chamber. Even relatively tech saavy people I know don't know Quora unless they
read TechCrunch (and a LOT of very techincal people don't read TechCrunch).
And I don't mean they know about it, just haven't used it. I mean they
literally haven't heard of it before.

I've never been to Quora and this is somewhat surprising given the number of
Google/Bing searches I do that take me a Yahoo Answers page or StackOverflow.
I'm surprised I've never once even seen a Quora page on page 1 of a
Bing/Google search I've done.

It's a weird very bimodal hype. I tend to agree with the author. Unless
something drastically changes in the next 6-12 months, it will be a niche site
with much less hype.

~~~
jdp23
Quora's gotten recent press in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, NBC, etc. etc.
... just try Googling them. So the hype's gone beyond the echo chamber.

~~~
nikcub
The publications you mentioned missed the wave with Facebook and Twitter so
they are now over-compensating with stories about Foursquare, Quora, et al

I heard directly from a journalist at one of these publications that they have
been directed to pursuit the latest hot startups so that they don't miss out
again.

------
mmaunder
Every investor I've chatted to about Quora since it's been created has been
all a-twitter because of who the team is. Because they're valley royalty the
earliest users of Quora have been Valley nobility which has raised it's
profile even further.

I used it once or twice but found no reason to go back and haven't been
directed to go back by Google either because the site doesn't answer questions
I have.

It's helpful in daily life to day that Quora is awesome because you're
agreeing with Valley nobility. At least it was until Vivek's blog entry.

------
endtime
I went on Quora a while ago and answered a few people's questions, mostly
about the Stanford CS department and maybe a couple about Django or AI or
something. I haven't been back on the site since - I haven't gotten any emails
from Quora saying "you should answer this question" or "these people liked
your answer" or "this discussion might interest you". I'm probably the kind of
person they want on the site, since I actively like answering questions and
helping people, but they're not doing much to keep me on there.

~~~
rst
A lot of that stuff shows up on the home page, if you're looking at it; you
get notified for upvotes or "thank you"s for answers, and the questions that
show up there are the ones that it marks as being of interest (though that
seems to be based solely on the topics you're watching).

The email notifications are a lot more sparse, presumably by design (to avoid
drowning people in the stuff). A weekly summary (upvotes, thanks, and
particularly active topics of interest) might be nice...

------
mahmud
He is both right and wrong on this.

Right, for the present: Quora is special because of _who_ is there, not _what_
, and there is an upper limit to the success of a fan-club.

But he is wrong in the long term, or _could_ be wrong, if Quora adapts and
allows the rest of the world to create their own fan-club universes. If it
goes on to inspire communities from different backgrounds, fields, industries
and specialties, then yes, Quora can become "Stack Exchange" + resident
celebrity monks + Wikipedia.

~~~
mbesto
So then what's to say the Stack Exchange platform doesn't just expand to all
other areas of life. I'd bet more on SE being more predominant on the web then
Quora, since their platform already is modelled this way. It's owner actually
said this is the success of such QA websites - create them in "verticals".
(don't have the quote, but remember reading it somewhere)

~~~
ebaysucks
Fred Wilson said that, on avc.com. He's an investor in SE.

------
elvirs
I am surprised by the fact that arrington allowed an article that criticizes
tehcrunch for being hype machine (which it is).

Regarding quora, yes it gets too much techcrunch attention but it is not as
flawed as the writer thinks, quora generates quality content thanks to its
quality users, while quality may start to decline as number of users
grows(something that happens to almost all startups) it is possible to prevent
that to some extent with introduction of advanced peoplerank/answerrank
algorithms.

Going back to techcrunch, yes it is a crappy place that religious fanboys (MG)
write about twitter, iphone and foursquare (and now quora) 5 times a day and
ex-alcoholics (Carr) makes fun of its readers.

~~~
zeemonkee
Agreed with you on the crappiness of Techcrunch.

However it's a bit low calling someone out as an ex-alcoholic. Call him out on
the quality and integrity of his articles by all means. But his alleged
alcoholism - true or otherwise - is nobody's business but his and his
family's.

~~~
zeemonkee
And this gets a downvote why ?

~~~
edanm
I disliked the comment as well.

But I honestly think it's not as bad as you make it out to be. Remember, Paul
Carr basically makes a living talking about himself, including talking (at
length) about his antics, especially while drinking. He also publicly
announced his decision to stop drinking, and brings it up quite a lot.

I wouldn't go around referring to him as an ex-alcoholic, especially not in
such a way, but Paul Carr has definitely made discussions of the subject
relevant to more people than his immediate family.

------
kmfrk
In the short term, Quora is an interesting site. Long term, I see nothing
being done by Quora to anticipate spammers, marketers, trolls, plain stupid
people, etc. Add to that the front- and back-end performs atrociously.

The first time I saw Quora, I didn't really see the point of it, but it turned
out to have some very interesting users. I don't think they have any roadmap
for the service, and I sincerely doubt that Quora is going to be relevant in
six months.

Quora may have done some interesting things as a start-up (or not), but the
founders seem to have foregone any basic wisdom that concerns creating and
maintaining a community.

------
mlinsey
This is the same criticism that has been leveled at Quora since it first
launched, and yet the site has been growing tremendously. It's too early to
say that Quora will eventually become truly mainstream, but it seems even more
premature to say that it won't when it is still growing.

Pre-launch, it's definitely true that Quora was given a big boost by the names
of its founders and (to a lesser extent) tech blogosphere coverage, but after
using the site for a while it's become one of the most important ways I access
information, in particular one of the most important ways I discover new
interesting information. That is potentially a powerful position to be in.
It's telling that the links in the original article to Quora questions were
are interesting enough that I clicked on all of them and thought they were all
much more valuable and entertaining than the original column.

------
zaidf
Let's not kid ourselves. Any morning we will wake up to the headline "Quora
acquired by Facebook."

~~~
codexon
I don't think this will happen. Adam left because he was marginalized by Zuck
and replaced by Bret Taylor as CTO.

Since then, Facebook has come out with Facebook Questions.

~~~
zaidf
Adam will return because it will be financially rewarding. Notice even when he
left, he only did so after he had fully vested.

He'll get a new vesting clock with the acquisition and all will be good.

~~~
codexon
If Zuck thought Adam was valuable, he would have given him an incentive to
stay instead of replacing his position with a newcomer and putting him in a
position where he would likely leave the company.

~~~
zaidf
_he would have given him an incentive to stay_

Clearly we don't know if he did. But what we do know is that guys like Adam,
Paul Buchteit etc. just want to go do their own thing after a while. And we
also know the tendency of founders to sell their co back to their original
employer or a close competitor.

~~~
codexon
_Clearly we don't know if he did._

It obviously wasn't enough if there were any. And don't you think it is
convenient that Zuckerberg "got rid of" the CTO position when Adam left (when
he complains about his position not fitting his stature)...and then a couple
months later they have another CTO again?

------
barranger
Maybe I just got up on the wrong side of the bed, but am I the only one who
was put off by this comment:

"Quora’s membership is growing largely because of the attention that
TechCrunch has given it."?

~~~
verysimple
Though it's hard for many of us to disagree with it when:

1) we heard of quora due to TechCrunch

2) we keep hearing of quora due to TechCrunch

~~~
barranger
#1 assumes that "we" all read TechCrunch regularly

personally if it's not linked from a story I've read here, I don't tend to
read TechCrunch. Nothing against the site, but I find that if it's something
that would interest me, it'll find it's way to HN.

------
jdp23
TL;DR summary: "Silicon Valley is again drinking its own Kool-Aid; it is
looking at the world through its own prism."

Well worth reading. There's an interesting comment from Fred Wilson too.

------
brk
Am I the only one reminded of the Usenet Oracle when hearing about Quora?

~~~
jerf
No.

You owe the Oracle a successful social network running on NNTP.

------
geuis
I find quora to be useless. I finally signed up the other day to ask a
question that I was having a hard time getting answered elsewhere. After 2
days, it had exactly 1 view, mine.

I consider the StackOverflow model to be much more useful.

~~~
dmor
you'll probably get a lot more value if you post the link to your question on
your own social networks (Twitter/FB) to start

~~~
fezzl
Then perhaps I wouldn't need Quora after all, if all the answers are going to
come from within my existing social network.

------
kloncks
_You can talk about your own products and services, and disparage others’; in
other words, it is a spammers’ paradise._

Same argument was used against Wikipedia back in the day.

------
verysimple
One thing that I'm getting out of this article and which I tend to agree with,
if a site isn't focused on a specific community the way HN or StackOverflow
are, there is a tipping point at which its quality becomes inverse-
proportional to the size of the audience. Quora might still be good because it
hasn't yet reached it.

eBay used to be good as well, then one day they got so big that buyers and
sellers were practically left to settle their disputes on their own. eBay used
to be my #1 stop for anything that I wanted to buy online. After getting burnt
2 or 3 times, I haven't opened a page on the site in over a year and haven't
bought anything from it in the last 3.

I'm also going to make the bold claim that if Facebook was in its current
state 3 or 4 years ago, in terms of quality and community, it would probably
not have gotten the success it currently enjoys. Most of us would just
consider it another MySpace or HI5 clone.

As far as Quora goes, if it is indeed successful, it might also very well be a
victim of its own success, but maybe by then it will be financially viable,
which is the one thing that matters most to its backers.

------
ramanujan
Quora will be successful if they can devise an algorithm which does
personalized ranking of users and answers. Rank users globally, yes, but also
incorporate _your_ upvotes, searches, and page views as features in a
correction term to locally rerank for logged in users. This way you see the
answers at the top which are valuable to you specifically, ranked in order of
your probability of upvote.

The basic math here has been around since Kaltix in 2003. It will need to be
tuned for this specific app, but an off the shelf version will be a
qualitative leap over Yahoo or Goog answers.

Because unlike Yahoo or Google Answers, Quora has the social graph as a
critical piece of ranking infrastructure. That is a huge difference,
comparable to search before and after the web, because the credibility of many
nontechnical answers depends fundamentally on the identity of the respondents.
And unlike Facebook Questions, they have the benefit of complete focus on one
area (Q&A).

------
orionlogic
I used Quora a bit, mostly in movie section. The main problem is the quality
of the questions are not so good. Something like "What is the best films of
director XXXX?" seems so pointless and subjective. And it is not in only
movies; in travel, web design etc... You see all around the "What is the
best....".

There is no best and the answers will(have) change in time.

------
keiferski
I don't know much about Quora, and have never used it, so I can't comment on
its chances of success.

But I really don't like the name, and I think it may hold them back, as far as
mainstream adoption goes. It's not an attractive name to begin with, and I
don't quite know how to pronounce it: koo aura or kwaura (rhymes with Laura)?

If we're comparing Quora to Facebook and Twitter, it loses the name game by a
mile. Facebook and Twitter are both easy to say and there's no confusion on
spelling or pronunciation. Also, Quora can't be easily or obviously verb-ized;
"Facebook me" or "Tweet it". I don't see "Quoraize it" or "Quoing" becoming a
commonly used phrase.

All of this may be irrelevant if Quora is just _that good_ , but it's
certainly something to think about.

~~~
akharris
I think your massively overstating the importance of a name to the success of
a company. Unless a name is straight up awful and suggests something
unpleasant - it won't have an impact on the success/failure of a company.

People thought google was pretty stupid. The word Microsoft doesn't really
mean anything. IBM is relatively meaningless, ditto for HP. All of those
companies are massively successful because of the products they built. That's
really the only thing that matters.

~~~
keiferski
Meaning =/= easy to say and pronounce.

Apple Dell Yahoo Microsoft Google Facebook Myspace

None of these really mean anything, but they're all easy to say and spell.
Quora, not so much. Considering that word of mouth is the single most
important "marketing method", I think it's relevant at some level.

------
kingsidharth
Can't agree more! Wait till 'Quora' version of Social Media experts start
spamming the site.

~~~
benologist
Pretty sure there's already plenty of self-serving questions - there's lots of
questions asking what [startup] does, or what platform [startup] uses for
their trivially small traffic.

Eg what is quora built on... with 3000 visitors a day their technical
decisions are untested, unscaled, and uninteresting.

[http://www.quora.com/What-languages-and-frameworks-were-
used...](http://www.quora.com/What-languages-and-frameworks-were-used-to-code-
Quora)

------
flipside
Vivek is absolutely right about Quora's scaling chances. I made the same
assessment back in October when I first started using it and their recent
unveiling of their future plans just confirmed it. Quora is niche, it picked a
good niche to go after, but it's still niche.

For a Q&A site to take over the market, it needs to be designed with scaling
in mind from day 1, it's just that type of market. Thinking that social was
the only missing ingredient was pretty naive, though it did advance the state
of the art a bit.

The last thing I will say is this, the real deal Q&A site won't have people
questioning it's scaling potential, but rather why nobody figured it out
before.

------
markkat
Is this just me? I visited Quora for the first time a few days ago. I logged
in, couldn't figure out what I was looking at, and logged out.

It prompted me a few times, ...I think, but I couldn't see questions and
answers right away.

------
sk_0919
The site-wide quality of answers matters less for Quora to be useful to an
individual when you're following people rather than topics. You see answers
upvoted by people you follow or answered by people you follow.

Quora will continue to work for the same reasons that Twitter does...I get
tweets from people I follow, millions of bieber fans don't affect my twitter
homepage.

------
ericgs
Quora's value comes from the quality of the people on it. There is very little
that's exciting about them except the people they've been able to attract
initially.

As the site grows, the density of interesting people will drop and the noise
will increase, getting worse the more mainstream it gets. Eventually it will
be a slow Yahoo answers.

------
jchrisa
They have a lot of good data to identify positive users. Also they have
considerably more latitude than your average geek q&a site, since there is no
firehose, and no visible karma score. Don't count them out yet.

------
aik
Just as with HN, it's not the technology that makes it so great, it's the
people. If the people stick with Quora, it will continue to be immensely
informative.

------
phlux
I use Quora daily, and I find the info valuable - but the UI and the clunky-
ness of the interface are debilitating.

I think that in the longer term, if they dont make topics easier to navigate
and sort info from - they will lose the value they provide. For example - you
cant easily browse the topics, top answers top questions etc.

The search box tries to be too cool and provide a list of what you may be
searching for - but at the expense of letting you type fluidly.

The choice of fonts, sizes, colors in the UI is counter-intuitive and
suggestions made to the quora team fall on arrogant ears "We designed it to be
like that" rather than, you know what - you may be right - useability is
affected by the slowness of the site"

Any thread with a substantial number of comments regularly crashes my browser
(the thread about which startups are hiring in SF Bay will crash FF on linux)
- and viewing the site on a phone is clunky, jerky and slow.

All of that aside - if they can allow people to post as quickly and
efficiently as Reddit - and allow for topics to be better navigated, I think
they will survive.

