I'm agnostic about the longterm prospects for Quora, but this article is not compelling at all. "It's not the next big thing anymore" is silly and could be app

I'm agnostic about the longterm prospects for Quora, but this article is not compelling at all. "It's not the next big thing anymore" is silly and could be applied to anything other than Google+ (according to this analyst). Web startups aren't zero-sum and there's no evidence provided that Google+ has harmed Quora's momentum. They aren't even direct competitors. "It doesn't solve a problem" is a strange objection. Quora attempts to solve a few problems, perhaps most prominently that some questions that you want answered can't be answered with a google search. A lot of the other functionality is built around facilitating their solution to that problem. They foster a community and social features in order to keep quality answerers engaged. The last two are just ways of saying "I don't like this" and don't amount to threats to Quora's success. They have a serious brand, and this guy likes playful brands. It's not interesting to him because he hasn't added interesting topics to follow, and that's Quora's fault because they haven't suggested those topics to him. The subset of users who insist on playful brands and who just can't think of topics their interested in isn't big enough to bring down a company like Quora. The suggestion, to turn Quora into Hacker News, would basically mean forgoing their purpose and vision in a last-ditch effort to leverage the community they've built. Not a smart idea (or a likely one).