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Short answer: no. Long answer: there is (IMHO) absolutely nothing innovative about Quora in terms of technology or concept. It's a Q&A site. No more, no less.

by cletus 16y ago

Short answer: no. Long answer: there is (IMHO) absolutely nothing innovative about Quora in terms of technology or concept. It's a Q&A site. No more, no less. The only noteworthy thing about Quora is the marketing success in all the Valley insiders they've gotten to use it.

liuhenry 16y ago
Agreed, but this: "all the Valley insiders they've gotten to use it." is a big one. Social sites are generally winner-take-all. You use it because of who's on it. To me, most of the points that Scoble mentions are a result of the quality of community. None of those features would matter if there weren't engaging people and discussions on the site. As to whether Quora made the community, or the community made Quora, I don't know enough to say.
Rauchg 16y ago
Quora's technology innovations and product polish are breathtaking.
- mattrepl 16y ago
  They have taken a use case of Twitter and Facebook and turned it into it's own product. People seem to enjoy using it but breathtaking is a bit much. Also, what breathtaking technology innovation have they produced?
  - rafaelc 16y ago
    One breathtaking technology innovation from Quora would be LiveNode. Here are some detailed notes that got taken down for some reason or another: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IdWqEvSiW7cJ:bugsalert.com/Abimanyu-Raja-Quora-Tech-Talk-Notes-Raw_41620.html+abi.sh+quora+livenode+notes&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IdWqEvS...
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - meadhikari 16y ago
    The breathtaking technology innovation they have produced is all the Valley insiders they've gotten to use it.
simonw 16y ago
Completely disagree. Quora have done a whole bunch of very smart and innovative things that lead their Q&A site to be a very different beast from Yahoo! Answers / Mahalo / Stack Overflow etc. * They are the first Q&A site I've seen that is completely personalised - you only see questions that are either followed by your social graph or apply to the topics you have selected. * Questions are owned by the community, not the person who asked the question. It's actually pretty hard to figure out who asked a question in the first place, and other people can improve the wording, apply topics etc. * They don't use a dumb points or badges based incentive system. Instead, their incentives are much more subtle - it's all about seeing how your peers respond to your interactions. The "thanks" button is a lovely example of this. In 2002, would you have said "There's nothing innovative about Google in terms of technology or concept. It's a search engine. No more, no less." ? But I don't think they're a "blogging" innovation. That's just a catchy headline.
- mmaunder 16y ago
  Pagerank was a differentiator. None of your points are.
  - huangm 16y ago
    Pithy, but wrong. They might not be themselves differentiators, but they are indicators of a differentiated understanding of how to design a good Q & A site that elicits high quality content from high quality contributers. Technology is no longer the only differentiator. We've moved far enough "up the stack" that there are lots of ways to differentiate in consumer internet beyond better algorithms. Do Craigslist, Facebook, or Twitter have anything that's, in your opinion, "differentiated"?
    - stcredzero 16y ago
      One could argue that those three sites just have the network effect going for them, but that's incorrect IMO.
      - deleted 16y ago
whalesalad 16y ago
Agreed. I really dislike all of these grand claims that x service is the future of y. It's just stack overflow applied to handle any topic.
jdp23 16y ago
as a Valley insider, it's not surprising Robert would think of a site oriented around his and TechCrunch's needs as a huge
wslh 16y ago
I agree. We are seeing very old concepts mainly boostraped over communities with a lot of influence. This is not to say that Quora doesn't add any other value.
buddydvd 16y ago
Quora's Webnode2 and LiveNode[1] systems are very innovative and simplify the creation of real-time web applications. In fact, I believe Quora's choice of tackling the Q&A space is merely to demonstrate the power of these two systems. One recurring problem in creating real-time web applications is how to sync the display between browser windows/tabs amongst different users (and of the same user). You can render the page, stream compact JSON data to the browser, and use the data to update the page with javascript. However, doing so likely require you to duplicate your server-side templates on the client-side. You can, of course, avoid duplicating your template code by only implementing them on the client-side. However, doing so will hurt your site's SEO because your webserver would now generate JSON data instead of rendered HTML that search engines understand. Duplicating template code increases complexity while removing duplicate code using client-side-only templates hurts SEO. This is the problem that Quora solved. Instead of streaming compact JSON data, Quora streams rendered HTML that updates any part of the page (not just a section of the page). From an answer Charlie wrote: "If I were making a new website from scratch without LiveNode, the first thing I would do would be to rebuild LiveNode. Pretty much everything about web development is easier and faster and more correct using it." [2] One of Abert's (Quora Engineer) tweets: "Going back to Django after having used Livenode is just painful." [3] More info: [1] http://www.quora.com/Quora-Infrastructure/What-is-webnode2 http://www.quora.com/Quora-Infrastructure/What-is-webnode2 [2] http://www.quora.com/What-limitations-has-Quora-encountered-due-to-LiveNode-WebNode/answer/Charlie-Cheever http://www.quora.com/What-limitations-has-Quora-encountered-... [3] http://twitter.com/146/status/15005261304 http://twitter.com/146/status/15005261304

by cletus 16y ago

liuhenry 16y ago

Agreed, but this: "all the Valley insiders they've gotten to use it." is a big one. Social sites are generally winner-take-all. You use it because of who's on it. To me, most of the points that Scoble mentions are a result of the quality of community. None of those features would matter if there weren't engaging people and discussions on the site. As to whether Quora made the community, or the community made Quora, I don't know enough to say.

Rauchg 16y ago

Quora's technology innovations and product polish are breathtaking.

mattrepl 16y ago
They have taken a use case of Twitter and Facebook and turned it into it's own product. People seem to enjoy using it but breathtaking is a bit much. Also, what breathtaking technology innovation have they produced?
- rafaelc 16y ago
  One breathtaking technology innovation from Quora would be LiveNode. Here are some detailed notes that got taken down for some reason or another: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IdWqEvSiW7cJ:bugsalert.com/Abimanyu-Raja-Quora-Tech-Talk-Notes-Raw_41620.html+abi.sh+quora+livenode+notes&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IdWqEvS...
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- meadhikari 16y ago
  The breathtaking technology innovation they have produced is all the Valley insiders they've gotten to use it.

simonw 16y ago

Completely disagree. Quora have done a whole bunch of very smart and innovative things that lead their Q&A site to be a very different beast from Yahoo! Answers / Mahalo / Stack Overflow etc. * They are the first Q&A site I've seen that is completely personalised - you only see questions that are either followed by your social graph or apply to the topics you have selected. * Questions are owned by the community, not the person who asked the question. It's actually pretty hard to figure out who asked a question in the first place, and other people can improve the wording, apply topics etc. * They don't use a dumb points or badges based incentive system. Instead, their incentives are much more subtle - it's all about seeing how your peers respond to your interactions. The "thanks" button is a lovely example of this. In 2002, would you have said "There's nothing innovative about Google in terms of technology or concept. It's a search engine. No more, no less." ? But I don't think they're a "blogging" innovation. That's just a catchy headline.

mmaunder 16y ago
Pagerank was a differentiator. None of your points are.
- huangm 16y ago
  Pithy, but wrong. They might not be themselves differentiators, but they are indicators of a differentiated understanding of how to design a good Q & A site that elicits high quality content from high quality contributers. Technology is no longer the only differentiator. We've moved far enough "up the stack" that there are lots of ways to differentiate in consumer internet beyond better algorithms. Do Craigslist, Facebook, or Twitter have anything that's, in your opinion, "differentiated"?
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    One could argue that those three sites just have the network effect going for them, but that's incorrect IMO.
    - deleted 16y ago

whalesalad 16y ago

Agreed. I really dislike all of these grand claims that x service is the future of y. It's just stack overflow applied to handle any topic.

jdp23 16y ago

as a Valley insider, it's not surprising Robert would think of a site oriented around his and TechCrunch's needs as a huge

wslh 16y ago

I agree. We are seeing very old concepts mainly boostraped over communities with a lot of influence. This is not to say that Quora doesn't add any other value.

buddydvd 16y ago

Quora's Webnode2 and LiveNode[1] systems are very innovative and simplify the creation of real-time web applications. In fact, I believe Quora's choice of tackling the Q&A space is merely to demonstrate the power of these two systems. One recurring problem in creating real-time web applications is how to sync the display between browser windows/tabs amongst different users (and of the same user). You can render the page, stream compact JSON data to the browser, and use the data to update the page with javascript. However, doing so likely require you to duplicate your server-side templates on the client-side. You can, of course, avoid duplicating your template code by only implementing them on the client-side. However, doing so will hurt your site's SEO because your webserver would now generate JSON data instead of rendered HTML that search engines understand. Duplicating template code increases complexity while removing duplicate code using client-side-only templates hurts SEO. This is the problem that Quora solved. Instead of streaming compact JSON data, Quora streams rendered HTML that updates any part of the page (not just a section of the page). From an answer Charlie wrote: "If I were making a new website from scratch without LiveNode, the first thing I would do would be to rebuild LiveNode. Pretty much everything about web development is easier and faster and more correct using it." [2] One of Abert's (Quora Engineer) tweets: "Going back to Django after having used Livenode is just painful." [3] More info: [1] http://www.quora.com/Quora-Infrastructure/What-is-webnode2 http://www.quora.com/Quora-Infrastructure/What-is-webnode2 [2] http://www.quora.com/What-limitations-has-Quora-encountered-due-to-LiveNode-WebNode/answer/Charlie-Cheever http://www.quora.com/What-limitations-has-Quora-encountered-... [3] http://twitter.com/146/status/15005261304 http://twitter.com/146/status/15005261304