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Should you be on Quora?

Mike Butcher

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Mike Butcher is the European Editor for TechCrunch. A former grunge rock drummer, he became a long time journalist, and has since written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. Mike is also a co-founder and shareholder of TechHub, a co-working space/service/community with several locations... → Learn More

Friday, January 7th, 2011
Comments

Should you be on Quora, one of the most hyped startups recently?

Cwora, created by tech comedian and speaker Tom Scott, says no, for the following reasons:

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  • http://www.broadstuff.com alan p

    Love the p*sstake. Quora is Yet Another Online Q&A, they all start out with hope and hype and most end up as ghost towns – not clear yet while thid one will be different.

    My more detailed take:

    http://broadstuff.com/archives/2375-Quo-Vadis,-Quora.html

    • Nick B

      I use a lot of QnA sites and Quora is way better than yahoo answers at least. Also since I am always open to trying new stuff that others come up with instead of bashing them the first chance I get, here is another interesting site (well, they just have an iphone app so far) http://loqly.me

    • marcel

      there are a lot of Q&A sites, and more focused ones like proust.com

  • http://www.snapanda.com B_prez

    One man’s trash is another man’s treasure…

    Cwora, a piece of modern art that’s sending a strong message, but another interesting question would be “what is the motivation for this art?”

    In any case, I like the bold lunge. :)

  • http://www.andywhyte.com Andy Whyte

    Haha that’s brilliant!

    I quite like Quora. I see no harm in it and I don’t really get why people would come forward to be negative about it :/

    • Nick B

      Same here…i just don’t get why people start having a problem with sites which suddenly become popular. Although, I find quora almost similar to vark but it is always good to have healthy competition rather than a monopoly.

  • Frank

    Quora is great, but I hope everyone stays off it, considering now there are still mostly smart people on it. When the common citizen gets on, it’ll degrade into total crap, like ehm, well all sites on the web.

    • Matthew Burton McFaul

      Yeah, that wikipedia is rubbish now.

      • Neanda

        haha

      • http://www.biodeals.de JohannQ

        It certainly is, in the german version.

  • http://thecopypasteblog.com Rahul Banker

    Well, I surely would love to be on Quora. Not for a longer time but at least I can try and test it myself and decide :)

  • http://jetlib.com/news/2011/01/07/should-you-be-on-quora-cwora-says-no/ Should You Be On Quora? Cwora Says No | JetLib News

    [...] Read the rest of this entry » [...]

  • http://www.browsermedia.co.uk/ Matt batterham

    Love this.

    The worry for Quora is that, ‘Cwora’ could become some what of a reality. Look at Yahoo Answers, it’s become over run with rubbish.

    Does anyone really have the need for Q&A sites now we have such a broad networks online?

    Personally, I can’t see the appeal. If I need the answer to a question it’s Google or Twitter everytime.

    • http://www.springboardseo.com Matthew Edward

      The difference is that with a broad-topic knowledge-base site like Quora, you can ask questions and then *engage* with others that are interested in the same topic.

  • http://@XNoArchive Brian D

    Quora is a site that wont jump the shark… it will chum the waters.

  • http://www.willvideoforfood.com nalts

    i THINK MY cAPS KEY IS BROKEN. My favorite. There were more subtle and poignant commentaries from this delicious parody, but that one spoke most fervently to me.

  • http://www.whatnottodoinloveandbusiness.com sherrod

    I’ve been playing with the platform the past few days but don’t see a huge amount of attraction. it’s not a microblogging site like Twitter so not really in the same space… not sure i care what questions others are asking unless i can tag certain subjects to be informed only of them?

    • http://www.springboardseo.com Matthew Edward

      You can, with topics.

  • http://tinyvox.com Srini Kumar

    Quora’s going to be perfect forever. They’ll figure out how to keep the community about real people, and they’ll find a way to keep masses happy. They’re going to do great; the hard part will be “how will you monetize”. But it’s cheaper to run than YouTube, and sort of more fun right now. That’s awesome.

  • Finbarr Taylor

    Not exactly sure why they have a cropped http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros next to each question. Any ideas?

  • milanoman

    haha

  • http://www.broadstuff.com alan p

    @Finbarr Ouruboros is a mythical worm that eats its own tail to feed itself….

  • Andrew

    A smart example of name similarity. I tried it at the new trademark search markify.com. Guess what the first search result for cwora is? I am actually a bit surprised.

    Quora could probably claim the cwora.com site, but having a sense of humor is sometimes the better option…

  • http://www.clueful.com.au/ Brendan Quinn

    I’m disappointed that there aren’t more “Tom Scott is a genius” comments here… of course Tom is also responsible for many web comedy greats over the past few years, check out http://www.tomscott.com/ We should be encouraging this sort of behaviour.

    Nice work Tom, I’m sure the Quora guys love it :-)

    • http://twitter.com/mikebutcher Mike Butcher

      Indeed – added link to Tom’s site now.

  • http://www.maistrafego.pt Mais Tráfego

    Love it.

    Quora is a forum with a bad UX… A really bad UX!

  • http://www.rc-find.com Shauna

    I like Quora but I think it is becoming more of a discussion site.

  • http://www.spekios.com Henrique

    I disagree with Tom Scott. It’s true Quora has been getting a lot of attention lately, probably more than it deserves. But Tom’s view in a bit too extreme and seem to have an ingredient of resentment and jealousy instead of pure comedy.

    Henrique.
    Founder of Spekios.com

    • http://goodyworks.com Michael Nordmeyer

      It’s pure comedy if you think about over-sharing and shameless pretentious social media self marketing without adding any real value.

      Quora is just an example.

      • http://www.spekios.com Henrique

        I agree there’s a lot of pretentious self marketing going on, but not everything on Quora is completely useless.

        It does offer a place where you can get in touch with real people. I just finished reading an answer by Quora’s founder where he talked about his ideas on scaling technologies.

        Before Quora, where else could I go to get an answer from him? Mention him on twitter? Send him and email and wait? I’m much more likely to get an answer from Scobleizer by doing it through Quora than emailing him.

        Henrique.
        Founder of Spekios.com

      • http://www.springboardseo.com Matthew Edward

        You can find “over-sharing and shameless pretentious social media self marketing without adding any real value” wherever you look for it.

        Quora’s what you make of it, like anything else of value.

    • http://www.clueful.com.au/ Brendan Quinn

      Come on now, taking things to extremes is the essence of good comedy :-)

      You could say he’s exaggerating to make a point. Don’t take it too seriously!

  • http://www.twitter.com/sikenic Simon

    There’s only one way to find out:

    http://www.quora.com/Should-you-be-on-Quora

  • http://AmericanForum.com Anthony

    Quora is nothing special nor unique imho.

  • Hobo

    So, Techcrunch will never pass up the opportunity to post about Quora. I’m surprised you didn’t mention Facebook, though?

  • http://trendoloji.com/?p=820 Eğer Quora Açık Olmalı? Cwora yok Says

    [...] Read the rest of this entry » [...]

  • Jim Greco

    I stopped using Quora early on when all the nutbags invaded the economics questions. Lots of nonsense slogan answers (e.g., “Inflation bad!”, “Gold good!”) by people who don’t even know the basics of ECON101.

  • Slopedown

    The reason a Q&A site is good is because of the niche community it attracts – if I’m a gardener (I am), I frequent one particular site that has tons of active and expert gardening people. I gain a reputation there, and it earns my allegiance.

    If I’m interested in Valley news, I go to Quora.

    Yes, Quora is a nice technical implementation of Q&A, but Q&A isn’t about technology – it’s about community – Iand I haven’t seen any reason yet to think that general purpose sites, including Quora, will replace the community feel of niche sites any time soon.

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