What is Quora?



This generation’s easy internet access has, no doubt, revolutionized society. We can connect with people a world away with just a touch of our fingertips. There is an additional advantage to having access to the World Wide Web— information. We are no longer limited to the Encyclopedia Britannica or local library when a question arises. Easier access to answers has people asking more questions and this Q&A revolution is where Quora.com found its niche in the competitive and ever changing online world.

Quora is a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it. Quora was founded in 2009 by Adam D’Angelo, who was previously CTO and VP of engineering at Facebook, and Charlie Cheever, who led Facebook Connect and Facebook Platform.

So you ask, what makes this Q&A website stand out among the crowd? There are actually several reasons for Quora’s success. Instead of just Q&A, Quora thinks about this as blogging. When you write a blog post, you write to your audience.

According to a recent article on TechCrunch.com, Quora’s founders explain “When you write on TechCrunch, you know that these people are expecting techie news about startups. When you come to a question page on Quora and it’s blank there are a bunch of people waiting for the answer. An expert will look at it and say “there’s an audience here and I know exactly what they want to hear. And I actually know about this stuff, or know enough to research and produce a really interesting piece of content, and it’s going to go to the perfectly targeted audience who opted in to hearing about this.”

Quora gives its users a sense of power, after all “knowledge is power”. Open discussion without the catty banter of Wikipedia, live/interactive feed, like-minded people seeking answers to life’s many questions and a well-designed website have made Quora a real up-and-comer in the virtual Q&A world. With this outstanding platform and a hefty $11 millon start-up funding from Benchmark Capital in 2010, it looks like this information portal is here to stay.

Quora has certainly sparked my interest and I read it regularly, consuming articles written by many different experts from various fields, recently I’ve enjoyed a few Quora answers from AOL founder Steve Case.  It is certainly worth an investigation and Im sure you’ll learn quite a bit in the process.  Just be careful who you are reading answers from.  Just as with Yahoo Answers, sometimes, the responder really has no idea what they are talking about.  The scary part is that they think they do and often sell their position well.  With Quora, I have found little of this, but still, reader beware.

Check out Quora HERE