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I can't help bit feel vindicated by moves like this because they're a sign that Quora isn't the Next Big Thing that many inside the bubble that is Silicon Valle
by cletus 14y ago
I can't help bit feel vindicated by moves like this because they're a sign that Quora isn't the Next Big Thing that many inside the bubble that is Silicon Valley seemed to think it is (eg [1]).
Actually Quora is better than that (for me) in that it's a double hit on the hype on both Q&A and social.
These kinds of moves:
- requiring login to view content;
- partially obscuring content on Google results to maximize sign-ins; and
- showing what you view to other people.
come across to me as a company coming off hype and approaching a crunch point. I believe now, more than ever, than Quora will end up an acquisition for Google or Facebook or will simply slide into irrelevance.
[1]: http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/08/23/the-power-of-quora-why-benchmark-was-right-to-pay-up/ http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/08/23/the-power-of-q...
- koglerjs 14y ago>Actually Quora is better than that (for me) in that it's a double hit on the hype on both Q&A and social. well said. fuck Quora, as the OP suggested. The best place to ask questions from the article like "What is the best way to hide an affair"--as if Quora could ever manage an honest discussion like that--is reddit. Of course, you couldn't ask the question just like that. It'd have to be more genuine, a post on /r/AskReddit like: "People who have had affairs: How did they happen?" Reddit has the kind of simultaneous anonymity and validity to look at things in [1] a very accurate way. [1]: http://www.alternet.org/inside-mind-serial-rapist http://www.alternet.org/inside-mind-serial-rapist
- ceol 14y agoThat rapist thread in /r/AskReddit was, next to the time a poor girl was harassed due to a user thinking she faked her assault story, the worst thing I've ever seen on reddit. The direct responses were exactly what the OP had asked, but the comment replies by users were flooded with rape apology and victim blaming. In one instance, a rapist had to tell people to stop apologizing for him because he knew he was an actual rapist. I would never, ever point someone to reddit as a place to have an honest discussion. You might as well make a thread on 4chan and only ask for the worst possible answers.
- redthrowaway 14y agoSo you take the replies to replies from a single thread, and conclude that the site itself is useless? I suppose I should discount Stack Exchange, as there undoubtedly questions for which all of the answers are unhelpful or incorrect. Your comment reeks of the typical reddit hate on HN, without anything to back it up.
- ceol 14y agoI wouldn't say the entire site is useless, but the good communities are few and far between due to the reddit's culture abhorring any sort of moderation. Would you like me to edit my reply to be more specific to /r/AskReddit? Certainly if you have a scientific question, /r/askscience is great, and /r/philosophy tends to be decent most of the time. But my point is that getting honest, relatively troll-free discussion on reddit, especially in the default subreddits, is uncommon.
- eli 14y agoAgreed. Compare AskReddit to something like Ask Metafilter, which is fairly aggressively moderated.
- koglerjs 14y agoReddit has more meta awareness than any online group that has ever existed. panichub, metacirclejerk, subredditdramadrama, ainbow--you name it, reddit's aware of it. Or more accurately, reddit's named it because you're aware of it. quick shoutout to google chrome for saving the text of this post when I accidentally hit command-q.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- rm999 14y agoWhile you acknowledge it's not the case, you're still making the mistake of thinking of reddit as a single community that is run in a homogeneous way. But subreddits have successfully and neatly separated the wheat from the chaff. Dig a little and you can find some great niche communities that don't exist outside of more archaic forum-style sites (communities that sites like quora would love to capture).
- crag 14y ago"The best place to ask questions from the article like "What is the best way to hide an affair" Nahh ask it on 4chan- /s (of course). Be more fun. ;)
- koglerjs 14y agoyou're the only one in this thread that knows chaos. So fuck you. :D edit: ok well, to the point of expressing it. orthodoxy. he's the only one that was willing to fight orthodoxy. because my thread had its bearings in the absurd and often wrong orthodoxy of reddit.
- koglerjs 14y agodownvote me more pls.
- adastra 14y agoI'm sorry but this whole branch of this thread needs to be downvoted straight into the abyss. It's a massive distraction from the actual topic at hand. No thank you.
- simonbrown 14y agoAlso, their real name policy (a while after I signed up, they emailed me asking me to use my real name). There do seem to be anon posts, though. Not sure why.
- daveying99 14y agoYou have to use your real name by default, but you an follow a question or ask one anonymously by clicking a button if you choose to.
- meritt 14y agoQuora is simply turning into ExpertsExchange. I haven't found anything terrible insightful on Quora that I can't find at the top of an HN, Reddit or StackOverflow thread. Never quite understood the hype centered around it.
- Tycho 14y agoHave you ever tried, like, actually posing a question that you want the answer to?
- Johngibb 14y agoI have asked a bunch of questions on HN, and, like, actually gotten really good answers to them. Same with stackoverflow. Just because there are people on quora that answer questions well doesn't mean that they don't partake in questionable business practices and that you can find the answers elsewhere.
- Tycho 14y agoHN is not a Q&A site, neither is Reddit. StackOvereflow is focussed on narrow topics (and moderated by Nazis). That leaves plenty of room for a site like Quora which is oriented around finding answers to questions you have on any serious topic. Other sites might have better matereial when you do a direct comparison, but that's like saying a book of essays by Richard Feynman is always more interesting than looking the same topic up in Encyclopedia Britannica.
- chris_wot 14y agoWho knew that Nazis were so good at keeping question and answer sites so well moderated? I doubt even Godwin would have known.
- rat87 14y agoReddit is not a Q & A site but sometimes very good questions and answers pop up. Particularly in the http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience subreddit.
- adastra 14y agoI think this graph by technology review says it all: http://www.technologyreview.com/graphiti/427964/is-facebook-worth-it/ http://www.technologyreview.com/graphiti/427964/is-facebook-... Looking at the value per user (shown as circle size), it's easy to see the huge difference between late 90's companies and the companies of today. Google and Facebook stand out, of course. Notice any outliers? There's at least one company that seems to be over-hyped... (Hint: it begins with Q, and ends in "uora".)
- suweekly 14y agoqwiki, turntable.fm, color, quora
- forensic 14y agowhy does that show that Quora is overhyped? your contention is just that the value per user could not possibly be as high as facebook/google etc? Quora has pretty rich content and while they'll never have a userbase like facebook i don't see why the value per user number is wrong
- adastra 14y agoMy contention is that the average value per user of Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Pinterest, Instagram, Yelp, and Youtube is $56. You take the average of those and you're probably looking at a pretty decent ballpark for the value per user of a website that depends on user-generated content and that people use every single day. At $145 per user, Quora is almost THREE TIMES that average. If that's not an over-hyped valuation then I don't know what is.
- combataircraft 14y agoI just created a bookmarklet to kill the shitty login form of Quora and keep reading it without logging into it: http://jsfiddle.net/PUyAQ/6/embedded/result/ http://jsfiddle.net/PUyAQ/6/embedded/result/
- adastra 14y agoThis is awesome. Much thanks.
- lucian303 14y agoIt is largely irrelevant.