
Why Quora Will Never Be as Big as Twitter - kingsidharth
http://mashable.com/2011/01/06/quora-growth-not-twitter/
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StavrosK
"Why apples will never be as tasty as oranges."

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kleinsch
I'm personally not sure if Quora will ever be bigger than Twitter, but I do
think they have a potential advantage in the fact that user who ask questions
are looking for answers when using their service. It's similar to the
difference in value of search ads vs display ads. Getting an ad in front of
someone who's searching for something specific is a hell of a lot more
valuable than putting that same ad in front of someone while they're browsing.
Most usage of Twitter is browsing, while Quora users (at least the ones asking
or researching questions) seem similar to searchers, so that portion of their
traffic may be much more valuable, depending on how successful they are at
monetizing it.

One problem with this theory is that some of Quora's traffic right now (don't
know the proportion, but I'd assume it's high in terms of page views) is users
answering questions or browsing updates from friends, who fit more into the
browsers mold than searchers. I think they're going to have the same
difficulty monetizing that portion that Twitter is.

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ig1
The whole premises of this article is that in-depth Q&A can't have mainstream
appeal, which is just wrong.

Look at the magazine racks at your local store to see what's mainstream. Look
at what people pay money to read.

Now tell me there's no market for Celebrity Q&A or Music industry Q&A.

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nicksergeant
Comparing Quora to Twitter is massively premature. Quora's not even better
than Stack Overflow, or even Answers.com. Riddled with annoyances, the only
thing I ever hear about Quora on Twitter is something that drives someone
crazy.

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Swannie
I agree. I'm not sure what the whole buzz about Q&A is right now.

Stack Overflow certainly fills a niche that had, before, been filled by lots
of independent "specialist" forums. Having that community under one roof is
great, there are a lot of subjects with strong similarities. The badges system
appears to allow good self moderation.

The value in Quora was the presence of an unusually large number of "over
achievers". Most of the people on there are doing very well for themselves in
the technology world, and found the questions interesting.

Now Quora is expanding, I don't see the added value any more. Really, how is
this different to all of the other q&a services on the internet.

The Stack Overflow approach of creating separate communities will probably
work better than Quora, whose original community is being diluted, not
expanded.

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citricsquid
Twitter can be useful (or at least they want to use it) to billions of people,
the service is what you make of it. The same can be said of Facebook or
Tumblr, but Quora? Not so much. It has no mainstream appeal. The fact that
this article needed to be written is surely enough evidence that everyone is
clamouring to find the next social media _darling_ that they'll grasp at
anything that shows a hint of being popular and try and force it.

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plnewman
The author makes that sound like a criticism. A site or service can be
valuable without being "big". The thing that I like about Quora is that its
easy to identify notable people, which is lacking from other sites. I think
Quora could actually become a pay service and do OK.

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fooandbarify
I agree. I don't really want Quora to become as big as Twitter, because then
it would become filled with garbage just like Twitter. (Weird, that sounds
crankier than I want it to.) I'd gladly pay to keep Quora a bit more
"exclusive" for lack of a better term.

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SriniK
Comments like this are common for most any website/product. Remember everyone
including tc mentioned that twitter was pointless. Wait for few years, as long
as they stick to their game, people will find use cases.

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benologist
Twitter was something new though, Quora's pretty late to the q&a party.

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erik_landerholm
(yahoo_answers || answers_dot_com) + follow == fail

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SpikeGronim
(concentric elite growth strategy || answers filtered by my friends) + email
notifications == win

Quora has so many respected tech industry people using it that I want to use
it. That's similar to how Facebook was first Harvard only, then Ivy League,
etc. - you want to be where your perceived social betters are.

My Quora feed shows the topics that my friends are interested in. This is
super valuable for finding information slightly outside what I would search
for myself.

Their email notifications keep me clicking back to the site so that I stay
engaged.

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erik_landerholm
yeah, it's cool right now. but, to get big they are going to have to let the
'unwashed masses' in. Expect more questions like, "why is paris hilton such a
sloot?" and less about interesting topics with interesting answers.

Once that happens, and it will have to happen for them to have the number of
users that twitter or facebook has it will descend into yahoo answer hell. I
don't see how they avoid that and get mass user adoption.

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SpikeGronim
That's very much a risk for Quora. But if they're still showing me my friends'
activity that could ameliorate the problem. My friends are still going to be
asking/answering questions that I am likely to be interested in.

