First it's the same old 'users first, monetize later', a distinct problem from monetization strategy: it's a failed mindset where every day you're not charging people is a day you're not learning what you can actually get people to pay for, that is, what constitutes your business.
Secondly he doesn't event start addressing the hard problems of Q&A sites:
1) How to keep the quality of answers high. As soon as more people get on the site, the quality will drop unless there is a smart mechanic to prevent it. All he has is assertion that 'You’re answering questions because ...' as if he knew the answer to that question for the next 100k users who aren't early adopters!
2) How to monetize a Q&A site in the face of approaching commoditization, on a scale that warrants investment. Ads? Really?
I've actually been pretty impressed by the quality of the answers on Quora. I was fairly skeptical at first, but its almost become just as good as wikipedia, but for local knowledge instead of global. Opening it up will pose risks, but right now I'm sold on the implementation.
Can't one problem solve the other? I know Google Answers flopped, but people were paying for research. What if instead you had to pay for membership like Metafilter? Granted, I don't think that would end up being a huge business, but it's one possibility.
Many very successful sites/businesses are able to monetize just fine off of advertisements. I'm pretty positive people wouldn't pay to use Quora when it launched -- or at least Quora wouldn't have had nearly the same rate of growth had they charged their users initially.
I'm not being snarky - but outside of Google and Facebook - who is doing really well with a pure ad model?
Every time I see this now I think of Digg and Reddit, both which seem to be having issues supporting themselves with pure ads. I actually think those two businesses and Quora could likely support a small(ish) staff and make enough revenues to make a decent profit, but I'm not sure that would get them into the decent exit category.
About.com (acquired for $410m). Last.fm was all advertising supported until last year (well after the $280m buyout). Hulu has done really well with advertising. Demand Media. How Stuff Works ($250m). Pet Holdings (Cheezburger Network). Etc etc. Plenty of web companies do just fine with advertising dollars.
Quick note - it looks like About is profitable (50M) it seems like one of the most profitable arms of NYTimes model. Can't find specifics on HowStuffWorks yet. Pet Holdings I like, but is it profitable? Hulu the jury is out, they're just cash flow positive - but they just moved to a pay model. I actually categorize last.fm and hulu slightly differently in my head then the pure, text based web plays, but that's okay.
Well you counted Facebook as a big success in terms of advertising, but they aren't exactly raking in cash. To me that puts it similar to Hulu and Demand--making significant revenue, but the real money comes from an IPO.
For the most part we're not talking public companies, so it's hard to be completely accurate. But I think it's safe to say that there are a lot of online advertising funded businesses who are providing strong returns to their partners/investors.
I think that Quora's advertising model could be similar to Google in that there is potentially a high degree of purchase intent associated with asking or even browsing certain questions. It will probably never achieve the same scale, but I can see their CPMs being comparably high.
One of the big reasons I think investors are excited about Q&A is that the model can be seen as a better replacement for search engines for long-tail, high-expertise questions. This is probably the reason Quora is trying to keep question and answer quality as high as possible. So far I think they have succeeded, although this will always be a tough thing to balance with growth.
The Stack Overflow guys seem to be building a healthy, if modest, business around Q&A based on an advertising + services (job boards, etc) model. Granted, I'm not sure this could grow into a billion dollar business, but it may be profitable.
It also seems that Quora is aiming squarely at Stack Exchange, and both companies seem to be holding their long-term strategies close to their chest. Perhaps they see some monetization strategy that the rest of us are failing to grasp?
Just a few off the top of my head: Any major blog (TechCrunch, Mashable, Gizmodo) or media website, Stackoverflow's entire network. Most well-trafficked websites take advantage of advertising in some form and support a number of employees.
However, Quora probably doesn't have to stick with "pure" ad models -- and I don't expect them to. Just because they say they aren't focusing on monetization right now doesn't mean they're completely blowing it off. The Quora team is full of some pretty smart people who I'm sure know a bit about what they're doing.
1. Quora has a slick realtime UI. But I doubt it will work at large scale - think about Facebook Chat scale.
2. Quora rely heavily on moderators. This will not work at large scale. I can understand Google's algorithmic-only approach, but Quora's human-based approach is just too chaotic.
3. Their topic approach to question categorization is just too simplistic. In essence they are just tags, i.e. folksonomy. No fancy Semantic Web techniques here.
4. Quora has no concept of NPOV - Neutral Point of View. It has a MPOV - Moderator Point of View. They should learn a lot from Wikipedia.
5. Quora has a lot of privacy issues. They also have inconsistent rules about anonymity.
You required to register with your real name. You have a choice of answering with you real name or as anon, but you must comment with your real name. You also can't see the name of the person, asking the question, who apparently can add anon comments ...
I can't delete my comments, my questions, my answers and my account at all, since they locked my account, after I added comments about some inappropriate and offensive questions.
You say Facebook has privacy issues? At least Facebook has no moderators.
6. Most of the questions on Quora are just UGC junk, like: "Why Asian girls don't date Black guys?",
"Why White girls don't date Asian guys?", etc.
Then there are some pseudo-political questions, like:
"Who will stop Israel?" and "Does the State of Israel have a right to exist? Why or why not?", etc.
A lot of questions are so called "Questions containing assertions", i.e. a troll questions asked by anons. If they want quality questions, they shouldn't allow anon. questions.
Some people try to ask a technical/programming questions, but they better go to StackOverflow.com and like, if they want a quality answer.
The only quality answers are on topics related to startups, entrepreneurs, angels and VCs.
So in short: Quora is a glorified forum software and a niche social network for Silicon Valley professionals (i.e. investors and entrepreneurs).
> 1. Quora has a slick realtime UI. But I doubt it will work at large scale - think about Facebook Chat scale.
I don't see why you've came to the conclusion about #1. Can you elaborate? It isn't like Quora bombards you with stuff that requires action right now, like Chat does.
> 2. Quora rely heavily on moderators. This will not work at large scale. I can understand Google's algorithmic-only approach, but Quora's human-based approach is just too chaotic.
Quora doesn't rely heavily on moderators, it relies heavily on the community. There are admins, but most of the "moderation" is done via users - eg: assigning topics, editing titles, policing users.
> 3. Their topic approach to question categorization is just too simplistic. In essence they are just tags, i.e. folksonomy. No fancy Semantic Web techniques here.
It has a taxonomy. Quora knows that Starcraft 2 is a video game, and a child of the Starcraft computer game series, which is made by Blizzard, and so on: http://www.quora.com/StarCraft-II/ontology
> 4. Quora has no concept of NPOV - Neutral Point of View. It has a MPOV - Moderator Point of View. They should learn a lot from Wikipedia.
I agree that there could be issues with stuff like answers written to sound authoritative when they're wrong.
> 5. Quora has a lot of privacy issues. They also have inconsistent rules about anonymity. You required to register with your real name. You have a choice of answering with you real name or as anon, but you must comment with your real name. You also can't see the name of the person, asking the question, who apparently can add anon comments ...
I'm not sure of your point. Quora used to allow anonymous comments whenever, and it was a nightmare for the community. You can ask and answer questions anonymously. If you asked the question you can comment anonymously, and if you answer a question you can anonymously comment on your answer. This is useful as you can clarify your answer via comments without revealing who you are.
I think Quora actually takes privacy really seriously. You can delete your comments, but you cannot delete questions/answers permanently, I agree this is lame.
> 6. Most of the questions on Quora are just UGC junk, like: "Why Asian girls don't date Black guys?", "Why White girls don't date Asian guys?", etc.
Like most UGC, its one of the situations where 5% of the content is insanely valuable/brilliant and the rest grey area nonsense. That 5% of content on Quora that is valuable is life changing content from some of the smartest domain experts that'll teach you invaluable stuff.
Also that 95% of junk is what creates a community - Quora already has its own memes and in jokes.
> The only quality answers are on topics related to startups, entrepreneurs, angels and VCs.
Quora has fascinating content regarding Fashion, Cooking, Dating and Video Games. What you're seeing (all the great startup content) is simply their initial early adopter market. It's changing - it isn't like Quora is a ghost town outside of the Startup topics. I think this just takes time and passion for other topics.
I use Quora quite a bit, I think it's fun, I think it's interesting. I think their design is brilliant. I think their goal is ambitious but I haven't seen the customer acquisition models I expected to really see them nail other topics - yet. If you're working on a startup you should just read this: http://www.quora.com/Startups/best_questions
and learn. then win. then contribute back to Quora.
I really don't see the value. Adding to a knowledge base with learned contributors is all well and good, but it seems impossible to scale past a certain point. He seems to shrug off the question as unimportant in the interview, along with shrugging off the idea of monetization.
It's possible that he's just being cagey about some secret sauce, but why bother? I'd think he'd want to create as much buzz as possible if he's figured out a clever way to scale a contributor-driven knowledge base.
Apparently I didn't find his answers were crisp and clear. You could see lot of generalism and diplomacy. I use Quora, and I kind of get it. But I was trying to see how he pitches Quora - as investors or many people say - in 1-2 sentences. I didn't see he pointing out what they really stand for - like the one thing. I didn't see he explaining Quora's differentiating or unique selling points.
I was trying to learn how he explains why they exist. But apparently, I didn't see that spark.
First it's the same old 'users first, monetize later', a distinct problem from monetization strategy: it's a failed mindset where every day you're not charging people is a day you're not learning what you can actually get people to pay for, that is, what constitutes your business.
Secondly he doesn't event start addressing the hard problems of Q&A sites:
1) How to keep the quality of answers high. As soon as more people get on the site, the quality will drop unless there is a smart mechanic to prevent it. All he has is assertion that 'You’re answering questions because ...' as if he knew the answer to that question for the next 100k users who aren't early adopters!
2) How to monetize a Q&A site in the face of approaching commoditization, on a scale that warrants investment. Ads? Really?