A mere seven months ago the world was introduced to Quora and newest questions and answers website. Quora hosts an open questions and answers forum much like its main competitor Yahoo! Answers, but in a more professional way. Quora also gives users the ability to rank answers with an "upvote" or "downvote" option that organizes responses so that the most accurate, relevant and helpful responses appear on top of the less useful responses (think Digg).
Quora was co-founded by Adam D'Angelo (a former Facebook employee) and Charlie Cheever. They decided to go forth with their creation of this website because they knew the potential of a question and answers site, but quickly realized that no one before them had done it quite right.
I learned about Quora when researching predicted social media trends for 2011. Nearly every online article I read mentioned Quora as the website to watch out for.
When I made my account and began playing with the website I was thoroughly impressed with the accuracy and seriousness of responses as well as the vast topics available for searching. On Quora you are able to submit questions and follow the responses, as well as just follow questions that interest you. Following questions means that Quora will notify you when a new answer to this question as been posted which allows you to continuously learn about a particular subject. I find this helpful because Quora allows you to gain many different perspectives on one particular issue.
As I mentioned before Quora's catalog of questions range from any array of questions you can come up with. I currently follow such diverse questions as "How much revenue does The Academy Awards generate?" as well as "Why is PBR considered a hipster beer?" While the answers to either of these questions won't change my life, they will provide me with interesting conversation starters and they will add to the seemingly endless amount of useless pop culture facts I have stored in my brain.
I've also noticed that Quora is a great outlet to discover new music. I follow the question "What are good songs to wake up to?" This question gets answered a lot and I've yet to dislike any song I've sampled from the list of responses.
Quora has a lot of promise in terms of a new highly addictive trending social media website. Much like Wikipedia I find myself beginning my search for a specific reason then, an hour later, after millions of clicks I am educating myself on a completely different topic.
I appreciate the community Quora creates as well as the level of professionalism it holds. Quora has very specific requirements for asking and answering questions and does a excellent job of making sure users are aware of their policies. This ensures that Quora remains tasteful and useful, unlike Yahoo! Answers.
Quora has an immense amount of potential and I am curious to watch to see if it can rise to level of other social media juggarnauts.
This blog aims to explore the effects of trending social media news. It will investigate new facets of social media and determine how they will or can effect current societal norms. Some of the main components making up this blog include, social media marketing/advertising, social media in popular culture, popular social networking sites (Twitter, Facebook), emerging social media sites (Quora, Tunerfish, Hunch), as well as reactions to social media literature.
This is a great post! I can always appreciate a new social network to become addicted to. I like that it has helped you discover new music. i noticed on your Twitter that you were updating what songs/artists you were currently listening to. I will most definitely have to check this out. It made me laugh that the co-founder was a former Facebook employee. It's always cool to see/read peoples answers to questions. It always leads to looking up something new on the internet. Thanks for telling us about Quora!
ReplyDeleteWhen I heard about Quora in your class presentation, I figured that it would be like Yahoo! Answers with people being counterproductive and not answering questions accurately. But since you have stated that members of this new social media site are professional and helpful, I wonder if older sites (like Yahoo! Answers) are going to disappear. Since this site was created by a former Facebook employee, are the communities of the two sites similar? Quora seems really cool and I can’t wait to sign up.
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