Social Q&A startup Quora recently hired an iOS developer, so chances are we’ll soon see an official iPhone (and iPad?) application emerge, even if its website already functions quite well on smartphones.
While you await said official app, be sure to check out Social Questions. Developed by Thomas Ricouard, the app will let you access and browse the Quora mobile website with a couple of handy… → Read More
A month ago, Polaris Ventures principal Ryan Spoon wrote up a quick blog post looking for a developer with Chrome extension/app experience. He had a pretty simple idea for something to help him with his job. Matt Basta saw the post and created the extension Spoon was looking for almost instantly. Now they’re opening it up for all to use and calling it Polaris Insights.
The straightforward app is… → Read More
Let me start with a disclaimer: I am not writing this in my capacity as a university professor or researcher; I don’t claim to be an expert on social networking; and I will be happy to be proven wrong—I have no vested interest in the success or failure of Quora. And given the fire I’ve already taken for tweeting an opinion that defies the Valley’s infinite wisdom, I know that this post… → Read More
It’s no secret that Q&A site Quora is exploding in terms of usage and growth. Currently the site is getting around 164,000 unique visitors per month (December 2010 stats from comScore), and we’ve heard from a source that the service is doubling users every four months. The drawback to that kind of growth is that content could suffer in return (i.e. the Yahoo Answers issue). While Quora… → Read More
There’s has been much discussion in the past couple of days about how Quora can handle its recent explosive growth, avoid becoming a Yahoo Answers (i.e. full of nonsense and spam) and scale with grace.
As further evidence of a growing success problem, Google’s Head Spam Avenger Matt Cutts points us to the above evidence of Quora fraud through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Ironically the above Human… → Read More
Many successful startups have followed a simple pattern in recent years. They gain the users then demand for an ecosystem begins. We saw this with Facebook, with Twitter, with Foursquare, etc. Quora is currently in the process of gaining those users. And now the demand for an ecosystem is kicking in. So they’re releasing an early API to meet that demand.
Specifically, Quora has launched an… → Read More
As we’re all well aware by now, the Q&A service Quora is exploding with growth. And while that may seem like a good thing, there are two distinct downsides. First, Quora is a pretty complex site and so scaling to accomodate huge user growth is difficult. And second, there has been a belief since the site launched to the public that as it grew more popular, the less useful it would become. Put… → Read More
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 (thanks to @renate for the tip): → Read More
So this service Quora, it’s getting pretty hot. But up until now, we’ve only be able to guestimate how hot it actually is. But today they’ve finally shared some actual information — on Quora, naturally.
Specifically, Quora engineer Albert Sheu has put up a long answer to the question: Why did the Quora website get so slow at the end of December 2010? The reason Sheu gives includes a… → Read More
Twitter’s core strength—limiting posts to 140 characters—has created opportunities for other websites and apps to siphon off and capture users around activity that originated on Twitter. These new sites and services leverage Twitter’s distribution pipes, free of charge, offering little or nothing in return.
In 2010, these common tweeting behaviors created opportunities for new… → Read More
Now that it’s 2011 and we’re back in the swing of things, a lot of startups are already undoubtedly laying out their launch plans for the year. And while anytime seems like a good time around these parts, a lot of startups pencil in the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas as a good potential launching point. Why? Because it’s early in the year (early March), with a ton of people and hype, and a few of… → Read More
Earlier today, Quora got a nice write-up on Fast Company. The article talks about all the buzz the Q&A startup has been getting (something we’re well aware of). But at the bottom of the post, something interesting happened.
“Despite the company’s reported $86 million valuation, and over 500,000 registered users as of today,” Fast Company wrote, citing a Quora thread that noted that the… → Read More
While co-founders Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever are famously quiet about Quora’s user and traffic numbers, entrepreneur Semil Shah has discovered something even more indicative of the site’s entrance into A-List status — A Quora button right along side that off Facebook and Twitter on startup BankSimple‘s website. A sign of an impending Twitter moment? → Read More
As many of you have noticed, we (and by “we”, I mainly mean “me”) have been using Quora a lot as a source of inspiration for story ideas. Some people seem to think this is a great idea. Others seem to think it’s the end of TechCrunch, blogging, and the world — perhaps not in that exact order. But here’s what it really is: business as usual.
One reader, Elias Bizannes, tweeted the following… → Read More
Addicted to Quora? Wish there were a way to search the Q&A site directly from your browser as well as receive notifications about your notifications while surfing the web? Well, this awesome Google Chrome extension created by Andrew Brown is just what your browser ordered.
Now you can be one click away from a Quora fix everywhere you go online (Brown plans on eventually showing you full… → Read More
Like most little kids, I used to love getting things in the mail. And in the 1990s, I was lucky enough to get something new every single day. Sadly, 99.9 percent of those were install discs from AOL. If you lived in the United States in the 1990s, you remember these. They started as 3.5-inch floppies and transitioned into CDs. And I’m not exaggerating. I got one just about every single… → Read More
People already ask a lot of questions on Twitter, but it is not designed as a structured social Q&A site like Quora. But that may change judging by a talent acquisition of the team at Fluther, a social Q&A service founded in 2007 that raised $600,000 from Ron Conway, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, and Naval Ravikant. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Twitter did not buy the… → Read More
Editor’s note: This is the third of a three-part guest post by venture capitalist Mark Suster of GRP Partners on “Social Networking: The Past, Present, And Future.” Read Part I and Part II first.
In my first post I talked about the history of social networking from 1985-2002 dominated by CompuServe, AOL & Yahoo! In the second post I explored the current era which covers Web 2.0 (blogs… → Read More
Q&A site Quora is officially reticent about sharing usage metrics which leads Quora fans to make some interesting calculations and guestimations. In fact there’s a fascinating topic section on Quora called “Quora usage and statistics” that attempts to parse all Quora related minutae from “Who has the most edits?, to “How much time does it take for a question to come in” to “What’s the longest… → Read More
Follow the yellow brick road…
It’s no secret that Google is working on a new social project that is thought to be a layer which will be spread over many of their properties. Actually, it is supposed to be a secret. But everyone knows about it. At first, it was known as “Google Me”, but that’s probably not what it’s going to end up being called when it rolls out at some point next year. And if… → Read More
Early last month, we noted that Quora was doing something rather interesting. They were using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to mass-create Twitter accounts. That may sound shady, but it really isn’t. They’re doing it as an alternative to RSS feeds. And Twitter is totally cool with it.
Those feeds are now live and ready to roll. As Quora engineer Belinda Gu writes on (where else) Quora: → Read More
Leveraging on the success of Quora, niche Q&A sites are popping up everywhere. There’s a Quora for the enterprise, and even a Quora for the legal community. Even Facebook is throwing its hat in the ring with Facebook Questions. Today Kommons is launching as a Q&A site focused on eliciting answers from public figures on Twitter.
The platform sits entirely on top of Twitter, so any question… → Read More
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is, among other things, a great place to get cheap labor to perform simple tasks that help black hat SEO efforts and general social network spamming. The problem is growing so large that it’s becoming a serious pollution issue, and we’ve begun real research to try to track the big guys who are behind it. And we’re using new search engine Blekko, which is transparent about… → Read More
One thing’s for sure, there’s probably going to be a Quora for every possible niche eventually. The Q&A site meets social network concept is just a great way to spur the creation of good quality content. A Quora for the enterprise, Opzi, did well at TechCrunch Disrupt: San Francisco this year, for example. And there are other examples as well. We’ll see more soon.
Starting now. LawPivot is a… → Read More
Rumors of “the death of stealth mode” have been greatly exaggerated. Ever since angel investor Chris Dixon tweeted, “New early-stage start up trend: get big quietly, so you don’t tip off potential competitors” back in March you can’t grab a coffee at The Creamery without hearing a “We’re in stealth mode” come out some neophyte founder’s mouth.
Multiple startups I have contacted for coverage… → Read More
Beloved Q & A site Quora has been spotty all day and is now showing a “503 Service Unavailable” error message when we attempt to access the site.
This is the first time I’ve experienced the site going down since it was launched in private beta by former Facebookers Adam D’ Angelo and Charlie Cheever in 2010. Its absence has motivated us to use Facebook Questions to try to get further… → Read More
If you ask that question on Yahoo Answers, you’ll probably get something about how a husband’s Xbox was once used for Netflix, but now it doesn’t work. If you ask that question on WolframAlpha, you’ll get get some abstract data about money spent on various things each year. If you ask that question on Bing, you’ll get a bunch of old content. Both Ask.com and Google give you the answer if you dig… → Read More
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