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Managements always work toward managing towards what they can measure. I’m sure that daily signups are a metric that they track, hence they’ll prioritize signup

Managements always work toward managing towards what they can measure. I’m sure that daily signups are a metric that they track, hence they’ll prioritize signups even at the cost of user frustration and love, something that’s less tangible. This is the kind of thing that kept me off Quora forever. It’s a great resource but I don’t feel like logging in 100% of the time. So now I just ignore all of their links.

_-david-_ 5y ago
With Quora you can just add ?share=1 at the end of the url and you can view the content without logging in.
nerdwords 5y ago
Quora's not a great resource anymore. It's just peoples' opinions boosted by an echo chamber. This is probably the only good content that existed on there before it became a cesspool: http://qsf.cf.quoracdn.net/best_of_quora_2010-2012.pdf http://qsf.cf.quoracdn.net/best_of_quora_2010-2012.pdf
foogazi 5y ago
Quora is such a shit show though - what happened there ? Their algo will just continually blast email you every category you ever clicked on
- alpaca128 5y ago
  No idea. I used it a while and enjoyed the content, then they changed something in the algorithm and I'd suddenly get basically the same content every single day, often >30% of the feed would be the exact same as the week before. They also removed the list of topics, so there was no obvious way to escape the near static feed. Not sure what they wanted to achieve with that change, but I never visited the site again.
  - city41 5y ago
    It's a real shame. I used to really enjoy my daily Quora digest email. One of the only automated emails I truly dug into and read in detail. Over time I read it less and less. Then switched it to be weekly, then turned it off. I miss the old Quora.
leros 5y ago
I could imagine they're trying to prioritize things like user retention and ad revenue, both of which can be done better by tracking user behavior. Losing a percentage of their logged out user base could very well be worth it to them in order to increase what helps their business.
garciasn 5y ago
It's because they need to start collecting more first-party data from users who land on their site. This is a result of Apple (and others in the future) blocking third-party cookie tracking. They are doing this SOLELY because of the need for audience creation, marketing attribution, and ad revenue.
- shostack 5y ago
  Bingo. They need this for user-level measurement and targeting. Wouldn't be surprised if this also supports part of their audience extension work with twitter audience platform as well.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  Broadcast radio, television, and print newspapers still exist without these things.
  - garciasn 5y ago
    They sure do; however, digital media and social in particular, absolutely rely on significant investment in their audiences, attribution, etc in order to drive more revenue and thus higher CPMs. More traditional media (such as OOH, Print, etc) all rely on very high-level metrics such as daily traffic volumes and lack of direct impact evidence in their attribution of value. This is why Facebook is SO very against what Apple is doing with iOS14+, particularly with cross-device and cross-app tracking opt-in, because they know it will decimate their ability to do what they do today.
miohtama 5y ago
Also Twitter had changed their policy regarding API keys. You no longer just ”get” them. You need to apply. I was rejected for getting key to export my own tweets. Of course, this means everyone is using web scrapers for what was used API keys before, because of you can use public internal API.
- arsome 5y ago
  I prefer to just steal keys by reverse engineering mobile apps. So easy to get keys for just about anything and charge someone else for it that way.
  - alanhaha 5y ago
    But as a developer, I won't put the API key in the client.
    - OrangeMusic 5y ago
      How will the client communicate with the API then?
  - anon9001 5y ago
    Excellent replies to everyone in this thread. You're spot on. Just out of curiosity, is there a marketplace for private APIs? I'd love if you could elaborate on the "charge someone else for it" part.
    - mguerville 5y ago
      I know of RapidAPI by rakuten, it operates as an API marketplace like this
  - hn_99 5y ago
    Interesting. As someone who hasn't done any mobile dev at all, is there a way to prevent something like this from happening? Can't you somehow encrypt such secrets in the app?
Kye 5y ago
Quora ended for me when spun/copy+pasted Google results started to replace answers. For example: I asked for the science behind the EPA's recommendations on UV exposure, and the answers were all word-for-word copies of the first result in Google, which had no detail on the science behind it. Just "avoid going out before x," "wear x SPF sunscreen," but nothing about the basis for the recommendations. That was years ago. Recently, I went looking for how to un-retweet something from an account that has since blocked me, and every single answer on every instance of someone asking that on Quora is more or less a copy of Twitter's documentation for an ordinary un-retweet. Useless search result pollution.
hammock 5y ago
This is not about measurement. This is about tracking people across third-party websites.
- ezconnect 5y ago
  This is about growing users, they are stagnant now and had been for a while just like facebook.
imhoguy 5y ago
Opening Quora links in a new private tab each time solves the issue for me. But agreed, it sucks.

_-david-_ 5y ago

With Quora you can just add ?share=1 at the end of the url and you can view the content without logging in.

nerdwords 5y ago

Quora's not a great resource anymore. It's just peoples' opinions boosted by an echo chamber. This is probably the only good content that existed on there before it became a cesspool: http://qsf.cf.quoracdn.net/best_of_quora_2010-2012.pdf http://qsf.cf.quoracdn.net/best_of_quora_2010-2012.pdf

foogazi 5y ago

Quora is such a shit show though - what happened there ? Their algo will just continually blast email you every category you ever clicked on

alpaca128 5y ago
No idea. I used it a while and enjoyed the content, then they changed something in the algorithm and I'd suddenly get basically the same content every single day, often >30% of the feed would be the exact same as the week before. They also removed the list of topics, so there was no obvious way to escape the near static feed. Not sure what they wanted to achieve with that change, but I never visited the site again.
- city41 5y ago
  It's a real shame. I used to really enjoy my daily Quora digest email. One of the only automated emails I truly dug into and read in detail. Over time I read it less and less. Then switched it to be weekly, then turned it off. I miss the old Quora.

leros 5y ago

I could imagine they're trying to prioritize things like user retention and ad revenue, both of which can be done better by tracking user behavior. Losing a percentage of their logged out user base could very well be worth it to them in order to increase what helps their business.

garciasn 5y ago

It's because they need to start collecting more first-party data from users who land on their site. This is a result of Apple (and others in the future) blocking third-party cookie tracking. They are doing this SOLELY because of the need for audience creation, marketing attribution, and ad revenue.

shostack 5y ago
Bingo. They need this for user-level measurement and targeting. Wouldn't be surprised if this also supports part of their audience extension work with twitter audience platform as well.
kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
Broadcast radio, television, and print newspapers still exist without these things.
- garciasn 5y ago
  They sure do; however, digital media and social in particular, absolutely rely on significant investment in their audiences, attribution, etc in order to drive more revenue and thus higher CPMs. More traditional media (such as OOH, Print, etc) all rely on very high-level metrics such as daily traffic volumes and lack of direct impact evidence in their attribution of value. This is why Facebook is SO very against what Apple is doing with iOS14+, particularly with cross-device and cross-app tracking opt-in, because they know it will decimate their ability to do what they do today.

miohtama 5y ago

Also Twitter had changed their policy regarding API keys. You no longer just ”get” them. You need to apply. I was rejected for getting key to export my own tweets. Of course, this means everyone is using web scrapers for what was used API keys before, because of you can use public internal API.

arsome 5y ago
I prefer to just steal keys by reverse engineering mobile apps. So easy to get keys for just about anything and charge someone else for it that way.
- alanhaha 5y ago
  But as a developer, I won't put the API key in the client.
  - OrangeMusic 5y ago
    How will the client communicate with the API then?
- anon9001 5y ago
  Excellent replies to everyone in this thread. You're spot on. Just out of curiosity, is there a marketplace for private APIs? I'd love if you could elaborate on the "charge someone else for it" part.
  - mguerville 5y ago
    I know of RapidAPI by rakuten, it operates as an API marketplace like this
- hn_99 5y ago
  Interesting. As someone who hasn't done any mobile dev at all, is there a way to prevent something like this from happening? Can't you somehow encrypt such secrets in the app?

Kye 5y ago

Quora ended for me when spun/copy+pasted Google results started to replace answers. For example: I asked for the science behind the EPA's recommendations on UV exposure, and the answers were all word-for-word copies of the first result in Google, which had no detail on the science behind it. Just "avoid going out before x," "wear x SPF sunscreen," but nothing about the basis for the recommendations. That was years ago. Recently, I went looking for how to un-retweet something from an account that has since blocked me, and every single answer on every instance of someone asking that on Quora is more or less a copy of Twitter's documentation for an ordinary un-retweet. Useless search result pollution.

hammock 5y ago

This is not about measurement. This is about tracking people across third-party websites.

ezconnect 5y ago
This is about growing users, they are stagnant now and had been for a while just like facebook.

imhoguy 5y ago

Opening Quora links in a new private tab each time solves the issue for me. But agreed, it sucks.