What Is Quora

As a writer, I ask a lot of questions. Usually, I use Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com, and several others. Recently, while researching for an article I wanted to write about, I ran across Quora. What in the world is this? I began to ask questions and found that Quora might be the best place to get answers, and that is what this article is about.

QUORA DESCRIPTION

Don’t know where I’ve been, but an awful lot of people found Quora, and used it, before I ever heard about it. Quora shows its popularity with a very high Alexa rank of 546.

Quora is a collection of continuously updated answers to questions. Quora is always up-to-date because of the new answers being added every day by members. The result is a page with the best possible answers for use by those who have an interest in the question.

A big value in Quora is that it is a place where question answers are frequently updated. When using the platform, you can be sure to have the most current answers to your question; it also encourages new information that is not widely known. Because users document what is happening around them, Quora ultimately becomes a large knowledge database containing just about everything anyone might want to know. Like other information on the Internet, once anything is posted to Quora, it is there forever so everyone can find answers to their questions.

Right now Quora allows you to pick five topic areas of interest to you. Using your selected topics, questions related to those topics are pointed out to you. Users keep Quora organized because every questions has a number of topics that go along with it. The topics can be used to interact with other questions which helps you to find the best answer to what you are asking. Answers are continuously improving because users can rate various answers so the best ones eventually rise to the top of the list. You are getting improving information every time you use Quora.

Quora was founded in mid 2009 by Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever, both former Facebook executives. This is interesting—I got the date answer by asking Google and was then referred to Quora for the answer. Some recent events at Quora(from their Website):

• May 2011: Quora reaches 20 employees.
  
  
• January 2011: Quora wins TechCrunch award for Best New Startup of 2010.
  
  
• March 2010: Quora raises funding from Benchmark Capital.
  
  
• January 2010: Quora public beta is released.
  
  
• Summer 2009: Company begins working on early Quora products.

SOME REVIEWS

PCMag gives Quora a rating of Very Good with four out of five stars. The review says Quora goes will with blogs and social media like Facebook and Twitter. In addition to question answers, Quora provides a platform for socialization and sharing knowledge. When you begin typing a question, Quora begins to direct you to various topics similar to the way Google operates. Your answer is likely to come with legitimate sources and other qualifications like parts of an interview. When you find an answer you like you are able to follow whoever answered it similar to following someone on Twitter, or you can go further by following the question with future answers. If Quora continues to offer quality information, it will become and continue to be a quality part of every Internet searcher’s bag of tricks.

In addition to being a vast knowledge base, Quora offers yet another social medium. If you choose not link up all your platforms, the topics you chose to follow when you set up your account will cause Quora to begin trying to determine your likes and dislikes and sending potential questions and answers to you via “Your Feed.” In the midst of all the connections within Quora, should you decide you don’t like the topics you chose, or you want to follow a different course, just change your topics and new information will begin feeding to you. To increase your personal credibility with your answers, it is important for you to provide accurate profile information.

The PCMag reviewer considers Quora as a starting point in research because it is impossible at this time to determine the credibility of those answering questions. If Quora continues to attract many new members, it is unsure how credible their answers will be. However, Quora is a lot of fun because you build relationships by thanking them for their answers and voting for what they have said. Through their Feed system Quora often presents questions that you never considered before.

Another review from Social Media Today says Quora is different because it is presented sort of like Wikipedia with Twitter thrown in. This review mentions some specific things that set Quora apart from other Question and Answer platforms, such as:

• Ability to follow questions, topics and people.
  
  
• Ability to improve answers and track changes through edits.
  
  
• Personal Quora inbox for direct messages between users.
  
  
• Ability to refer a question to someone you know who has pertinent knowledge.
  
  
• Ability to “Thank” a user for a helpful answer (even if you didn’t ask the question).
  
  
• Statistics on each question, including views, monitors, and followers.
  
  
• Connect through Facebook and Twitter.

When connecting through Facebook, Quora uses your profile information to help find an answer to your questions. Quora seems to be getting more popular among bloggers which indicates a growing number of users. As the user numbers grow, the depth of information in the Quora database will grow, assuring increasingly better answers for questions. This site will not replace Google, but in some instances it may be a better way to find answers. I already showed where Google immediately referred me to Quora. Amazing, isn’t it?

WHO DO PEOPLE FOLLOW ON QUORA?

To give you an idea of the depth of subject and te associated contributors, here is a partial list of people being followed on Quora (the complete list is much longer):

• Astrobiology: Bulat Bochkariov
  
  
• Astronomy: Edwin Kite, Leo C. Stein
  
  
• Biology: Julie Jackson, Shan Kothari, Jae Won Joh, Melinda T. Owens, Alex Pollen, Alex Siegel
  
  
• Bioengineering: Blake Byers, Jon Rodriguez
  
  
• Brands & Branding: Navin Gupta, Venkatesh Rao, Lawrence Tran
  
  
• China and Chinese Internet: Bill Bishop, Paul Denlinger, Kaiser Kuo, Shannon Larson, Ashton Lee, Jon Russell, Daniel Shi
  
  
• Computer Programming, Programming Languages, Software Engineering: Keith Adams, Bulat Bochkariov, Charlie Cheever, Tracy Chou, Adam D'Angelo, Brendan Eich, Jeff Hammerbacher, Todd Lipcon, Leo Polovets, Bob Ippolito, Dan Robinson, Eric Sammer, Mark Slee, Jack Stahl, Yishan Wong
  
  
• Economics: Jeremy Bulow, Erik Fair, Ben Golub, J.C. Hewitt, Jeremy Karmel, Jon Levin, Yair Livne, Jeffrey Miron, Krijn Poppe, Larry Summers, Alex Tabarrok, Jinghao Yan
  
  
• Finance: Ray Chambers, Gus Fuldner, J.C. Hewitt, Andy Rachleff, Alex Song, Nick White
  
  
• Law and Attorneys: Lisa Borodkin, Cliff Gilley, Antone Johnson, Kevin Moore, Keith Rabois, Ani Ravi, Vanessa Schoenthaler, Ari Shahdadi, Stephen Venuto
  
  
• Mathematics: Tracy Chou, Steve Denton, Ben Golub, Jack Huizenga, Daniel McLaury, Sridhar Ramesh, Brandon Smietana, Leo Stein
  
  
• Medicine & Healthcare: Linda Bahnson Avey, Jae Won Joh, Andres Quintero, Michelle Sandberg, Laszlo B. Tamas, Ian York
  
  
• Online Marketing: Alex Grechanowski
  
  
• Startups and Startup Advice: Brendan Baker, Steve Case, Jason Putorti, Keith Rabois, Adam Rifkin, David O Sacks, Semil Shah, Tristan Walker, Michael Wolfe, Yishan Wong

JOURNALISTS IN THE QUORA COMMUNIITY
It’s important to have well known journalists on board Quora to answer questions. A very partial list follows:

• The Atlantic: Emersson Barillas, James Fallows, Alexis Madrigal
  
  
• BBC and BBC Radio 4: Gary Andrews, Paul Brannan, Paul Coslett, Ignacio De Los Reyes, Matthew Eltringham, Max Engel, Jonathan Fildes, Nicholas Garnett, Hugh Garry, Nick Haley, Fiona Hodge, David Jones, Krisztina Katona, Nick Lawrence, Stephen Martin, Mo McRoberts, Andy Pipes, Peter Price, Tim Reid, Mark Sandell, Maggie Shiels, James Thornett, Mark Ward, Tim Weber, Ollie Williams, Lewis Wiltshire
  
  
• Bloomberg & Bloomberg BusinessWeek: Justin Bachman, Erin Meek Gill, Rachael King, Brad Stone, Brian Womack, Doug MacMillan
  
  
• Boston Globe: Steve Jermanok, Megan McKee
  
  
• CNET: Jason Fischel, Caroline McCarthy
  
  
• The Economist: Martin Giles, Gideon Lichfield, Ludwig Siegele, Will Wilkinson
  
  
• Fast Company: Lindsay Cutler, David Lidsky, Anya Kamenetz, Ellen McGirt, Noah Robischon
  
  
• Financial Times: Esther Bintliff, Tim Bradshaw, Tom Glover, Bede McCarthy, Chris Nuttall, Mustafa Sogancilar, Martin Stabe
  
  
• Forbes: Taylor Buley, Oliver Chiang, Paul Denlinger, Rohin Dharmakumar, Lewis Dvorkin, Bob Egan, Gady Epstein, Nina Gould, Quentin Hardy, Luisa Kroll, Steve McNally, Mike Perlis, Nicole Perlroth, Dorothy Pomerantz, Andrea Spiegel, Ramnath Subbaraman, Bruce Upbin
  
  
• Fortune and CNN Money: Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Jessi Hempel, Beth Kowitt, Michal Lev-Ram, JP Mangalindan, Dan Primack, Laurie Segall
  
  
• Los Angeles Times: Martin Beck, Sean Gallagher, Jessica Guynn, Tony Pierce
  
  
• Mashable: Emily Banks, Pete Cashmore, Josh Catone, Louis Dorman, Brenna Ehrlich, Amy-Mae Elliott, Karen Hartline, Kate Hayden, Adam Hirsch, Lauren Indvik, Sarah Kessler, Vadim Lavrusik, Jolie O'Dell, Adam Ostrow, Ben Parr, Brett Petersel, Andrew Reedman, Lauren Rubin, Erica Swallow, Frederick Townes, Jennifer Van Grove, Christina Warren, Tamar Weinberg
  
  
• The New York Times: Deb Amlen, Nick Bilton, Charles Duhigg, Juan Fach, David Gallagher, Diana B. Henriques, Patrick LaForge, Lexi Mainland, John Markoff, Tim O'Brien, Amy O'Leary, David Pogue, Jennifer Preston, Evelyn Rusli, Brian Stelter, Jenna Wortham
  Reuters: Maria Aspan, Eric Auchard, Mark Jones, Terry Moseley, David Schlesinger
  
  
• Wall Street Journal: Dennis Berman, Katie Boehret, Ben Cohen, Amir Efrati, Geoffrey Fowler, Priya Ganapati, Darren McDermott, Paul Pangrazzi, Katie Rosman, Sarah Slobin, Cari Tuna, Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, Jessica E. Vascellaro
  
  
• Washington Post: Ron Charles, Ben de la Cruz, Jon DeNunzio, Don Graham, Cory Haik, Ryan Kellett, Ezra Klein, Katie Rogers, Ian Shapira
  
  
• Wired: John C Abell, Michael Calore, Sarah Fallon, Thomas Goetz, Evan Hansen, Steven Levy, Joanna Pearlstein, Gary Rivlin, Ryan Singel, Dylan Tweney, Bill Wasik

There are a lot more journalists available to provide question answers. From this partial list you can see the vast amount of professional talent available to help you get the best answers to your questions.

GENERAL QUORA POLICIES

Unless content is specifically marked “not for reproduction (NFR),” you are allowed to publish it anywhere on the Web. To do this, it is required that you link back to the original content on Quora. There are some additional restrictions here. There are some additional requirements listed on the Quora Website; you need to be familiar with all Quora policies before using information from the site.

BROWSING QUORA

One of the most important functions on Quora is the ability to browse. When you click this link, you are taken to a page showing a number of topic areas related to the interests you have shown when you first signed up for Quora. You can always change your interests, but the topics that come up when you click “browse” are those you last listed.

This page also lists “trending” topics, meaning those ideas that are most popular at the moment, and that have been talked about by many people at any one time. When I clicked this page to write this article, imagine my surprise that the second question had to do with a subject very dear to my thinking, and one included in a book I’m currently writing. This proves to me that Quora is an up-and-coming reference tool for anyone doing research of any kind. It won’t replace Google, Yahoo!, or Bing, but it is surely an outstanding additional information source.

WHAT DO PEOPLE DO WITH QUORA?

Some things people use Quora to do are discussed in this article. Here are some excerpts about what people do with Quora:

• One user follows journalists on Quora to discover the current hot topics in order to better deal with the press.
  
  
• A software investment firm employee uses it to answer high-tech questions and attract quality investment prospects.
  
  
• An employee of an online lifestyle magazine posted an answer, which attracted many additional posts causing additional clickthroughs to their Website. All this resulted in much additional traffic.

CONCLUSION

Most of you need to do a lot of writing as a home based entrepreneur. Writing requires a much research seeking the answers to many questions. Quora seems to be a perfect addition to your main research avenues which most likely include Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and others. Quora is different because it has many characteristics of a social media platform. This is important since it results in relationships around your questions. These relationships then result in building a more comprehensive answer and adding to the in-depth database of Quora.
I have mentioned several ways that Quora has impressed me personally. The one that really excited me was using the browse function and immediately turning up a major trending subject that is directly related to an important part of the book I am writing. My intention is to begin checking in to Quora every day, and my suggestion is that you try it as well. It just may help us all do a better job.