12 ms·
I think Adam's mistake here is to go too much by the numbers. He presumably has numbers that show that Quora ends up net ahead if they force people to create a
by pg 14y ago
I think Adam's mistake here is to go too much by the numbers. He presumably has numbers that show that Quora ends up net ahead if they force people to create accounts to read answers. He grew Facebook very effectively by following the numbers. But he may not realize how different this case is from Facebook's. It may well be that for a site like Quora, at this stage in its life, users are not all equal. It may be a mistake to alienate the sort of people Quora has been alienating by doing this, even if they end up numerically ahead in the short term.
I'm one of them. Quora has now spent several years training me to be bummed out every time I click on a link to their site. Every time it happens, I dislike them more, and become more resistant to creating an account. I now think of it as a site for other people, who are willing to put up with the stuff they do. I'm pleased to find there are others like me.
I like Adam, but I wish he'd stop doing this.
- rdl 14y agoI'm a pretty heavy user of Quora, and I have been "trained" the same way, at least on mobile. When I click on a Quora link inside FB app or whatever, it takes me to iTunes to re-download the Quora app. Or, I click in Twitter, and it doesn't have my credentials, so same problem as you. It also keeps me from posting links to Quora content anywhere else.
- binarycrusader 14y agoIt's so utterly broken. At the beginning I was just annoyed because you could select the blurred text and still read it, but now (for the desktop site) they actually substitute the text with dynamically generated images that are a blurred version. I became so enraged over this that I decided to install the "Personal Blocklist (by Google)" Chrome plugin and then added quora.com to the blocklist just so that I wouldn't see them in results when I searched for things on Google. Like you, they've trained me to never want to contribute to their site, and to never, ever want to consume the content they provide.
- davidandgoliath 14y agoSame. It takes a lot to get on my blocklist and the only site that now populates it is quora.
- edem 14y agoIndeed. Same stands for me too.
- thejosh 14y agoThat and mirrors of google groups such as gmame
- limmeau 14y agoGmane the mail-to-news gateway and archive? It's not like Google Groups owns all those mailing lists.
- pseut 14y agoGmane doesn't mirror google groups -- it mirrors public mailing lists and originally was made to reformat them for news readers[1]; some mailing lists use it intentionally as their public archives (emacs org-mode for one) so you might be missing out if you blacklist it. I don't have any affiliation with them, but they don't seem too bad. [1] http://gmane.org/about.php http://gmane.org/about.php
- niftylettuce 14y agoThis is the same reason why I wrote this Quora Login Prompt Block that was on HN a while back... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/block-quora-login-popup/fkbnfnaikpdihahjljbigedkangbieih?hl=en-US https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/block-quora-login-... 254 users and growing, quick hack is to add ?ref=fb
- markdown 14y agoWho's Adam, and what is his role in all this?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- staunch 14y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_DAngelo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_DAngelo
- deefour 14y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_D%27Angelo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_D%27Angelo
- shardling 14y agoThis is the second time in a couple of days I've seen a wikipedia link posted with the %27 character stripped out. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5208678 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5208678) Is there some browser or extension that's accidentally filtering this when you copy/paste a link?
- markkanof 14y agoApparently Adam is one of the founders of Quora. Depending on what online communities you are part of, Paul Graham's comment may be confusing as he is directly addressing the founder of Quora, not Scott Hanselman who is the author of the article.
- largesse 14y agoWeren't Quora the ones who tried to tell other users which pages you read also? Yup, it was them: http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/08/09/creepy-quora-erodes-users-privacy-reveals-what-you-have-read/ http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/08/09/creepy-quora-erod... This more than cluelessness, it's the same sort of low-grade sociopathy that underlies Facebook's shifting non-privacy policies.
- dclowd9901 14y ago>Quora has now spent several years training me to be bummed out every time I click on a link to their site. "Bummed". Yeah that really describes it perfectly. Especially with how immaculately their digest emails are constructed, to be hit with that asinine wall is a straight-up bummer, and stops me dead in my tracks.
- eshvk 14y agoYeah, I have been incredibly impressed by how good their digest email is designed. I am sure there is a serious amount of cherry picking (or machine learning) that goes into them but they are damn good, I say.
- WickyNilliams 14y agoSame here, I only ever visit their site to read the articles they've picked for me in the email digest. I was thinking about this the other day, there's probably no other site where I interact with them like that. But still, I click an email link and am automatically logged in, but they still insist on me downloading the fucking app! Thankfully in chrome on android I just click "request desktop site" and all that nonsense goes away.
- semilshah 14y agoI am a huge Quora fan and user but would have to agree with this assessment. Most of Quora's traffic "lurks" and this will be the search audience they need to get. What they're doing now is trying to make sure they have your account credentials to monitor what you "lurk" for. At some point, my guess is that they'll remove this tactic. I will say, however, that the web created "inside" Quora is some of the richest, most high-fidelity information on the entire web, and it may not exist elsewhere.
- bitcartel 14y agoQuora is now 3 years old and has taken $61 million from investors. Are there any numbers publicly available to show user growth over this period?
- SwellJoe 14y agoAll the numbers show stagnation, and Quora getting dwarfed by other (less prone to ass-hattery) answers sites, like StackOverflow. Quora traffic hasn't grown in years, according to Alexa and others. I believe they're simply optimizing the wrong variables. It has certainly driven me away. I use the google personal block list, and Quora was among the first sites to go on it.
- dolphenstein 14y agoI'd consider over zealous mods as somewhere along the ass-hattery spectrum.
- MrMatters 14y agoCorrect me if I'm wrong, but: 1. Third party statistics sites like Alexa and Compete are horribly untrustworthy indicators of reality. 2. Growing traffic isn't the best way to foster a community. I believe pg has written about this a few times, with regards to communities in general and HN. I think the Quora community is amazing. It's very populous and the quality of answers is generally on par or better than specialty interest sites/forums from a wide range of topics, all in one place. Of course, it has its strengths and its weaknesses - for example, a strength would definitely be reading an answer from an actual CIA [something] analyst, former Foreign Service Officer, doctor, etc. on a relevant question, but it falls behind in areas like technology IMO. The site is annoying and I hate a lot about the community (surprise, it turns out "mature adults" can use shitty memes just as much as the teens everyone blames for them on reddit), but I think they've done a great job at fostering the kind of community they want so far. If anything, it's being threatened by the pressure of growing.
- jarek 14y agoHN can afford to go ahead and foster a community, but then again it hasn't taken $61 million that investors are expecting a return on.
- InclinedPlane 14y agoIt's funny, I'm more likely to fiddle about with chrome's inspector to try to remove just the right divs to get a quora page to be readable than to spend however long it takes to sign up. It's personally grating to me that they take such a boneheaded tack to content in the 21st century. Did they learn nothing from expertsexchange? It grates even more that they are putting crowd sourced content behind a wall.
- megablast 14y agoAh yes, firebug is also great for stuff like this. Click on firebug, click on the overlay, press delete. Bam, you have your page. Doesn't work so well on mobiles though.
- zallarak 14y agologin form. bam, you have your page. edit. works just fine on a mobile phone.
- mrgordon 14y agologin form. bam, you are being followed around the web. maybe Quora will even decide to tell your friends what articles you clicked on. who knows what new "feature" they've added today
- zallarak 14y agoGood point, by logging in you are consenting to their tracking. I must be honest though, I still think it's a fair trade off. I also suspect that making content public might make it worse - people know on HN and Reddit their comments are visible to a huge anonymous constituency and it biases the nature of responses.
- abraxasz 14y agoCan you elaborate on that? I mean, how exactly does it bias people's response? The "privacy" of a service can affect people's answer if it is that, private. But Quora is not a super exclusive club: anyone who's willing to spend some time signing up, and who's willing to risk having his posts revealed to his facebook friends because of a new "feature" can get into this club... So I ask again, what peace of mind does it bring you to know that your answers are behind Quora's walls?
- balajinix 14y agoYahoo Answers is open. Has millions of questions and answers. Lot of people who truly appreciate a good answer, use it. Just that elite don't want to answer questions from ordinary folks and seclude themselves in quora.
- ImeldaTheHun 14y agoYahoo Answers is also STUPID. Full of not-all-that-bright high school and middle school kids trying to get help with their homework. I have written answers for some of those kids on Yahoo Answers, in subject areas where I know a lot. It drives me to despair. The best answers I see on YA are workmanlike. On Quora most of the questions are reasonably good, most of the names are real, and some of the answers are brilliant.
- mickhagen 14y agoHere comes the mob. Really? Are we all gonna throw up our arms because of this? We use their service, we consume, read and digest their content like blood-suckers and now we get mad they're asking us to sign up? PG you've been reading Quora for "several years" and you think it's unjust they are asking you to sign up? Quora has let us eat at their house for years and now all they're asking is we take off our shoes before entering. Let's not forget, we're in their house! As an entrepreneur, how will we ever convince users to actually pay for products when the mob and pitch forks come out when they ask us to sign up? We are so entitled it's sad. Really hope Quora doesn't bow down here. They aren't asking for your first-born. If you wanna be a member of their community, then be a member. Nothing unfair about that.
- lusr 14y agoRead his comment again. He's describing the same frustration I and apparently many others have experienced clicking on a link (from a search engine, a blog, etc.) only to hit a wall. At this point I'm not a user of the site yet. The gist of your argument is how we're using a service, etc. That's fine, they can setup their service however they choose. And we, as potential users, can point out what a poor setup they have chosen. The irony is I have an account... linked to my Facebook profile. But I can't log in with that from work. There may or may not be a way around this (perhaps a new account or linking my account to an email login), but I'm so irritated by their antagonistic approach that when I see the wall appear I just close the browser tab. It's now gotten to a point where I don't even bother using Quora from home because I so strongly disagree with their policy.
- Katelyn 14y agoI agree with this argument, but not necessarily the tone of it. Quora is a business as much as it is a consumer facing service with a strong mission to uphold. But the reality is, if Quora didn't keep its numbers out of the red and into the black by doing "annoying things" like forcing app downloads or account creation, then they would run out of capital and cease to exist. So, take your pick. Or better yet, just stop complaining. Also, their mobile website isn't fully functional or in some cases usable. I beta test it, and it's riddled with bugs and missing features. Frankly, a lot of services today are skipping mobile web all together, and focusing on driving app downloads to provide a richer experience. Bottom line: Services valuable to end users are also running a businesses. We must learn to give and take.
- zallarak 14y agoI disagree - they are building a valuable repository of knowledge. If a simple login form is a deterrent for you in learning or understanding something new, that's unfortunate. Don't get me wrong, I also get a little dissapointed when it happens, but don't really mind logging in.
- codelust 14y agoI'll keep aside the logic of whether I like what they are doing or not and ask if they have any other option. The die has already been cast in Quora's case, from what it looks like from the outside (I'm speculating wildly here), it looks like the company realized a while ago (around the time of the Charlie Cheever ousting saga) that they're growing at a pace much slower than what is expected out of them. A $11 million series A to $50 million series B usually fits the profile of a company in hyper growth stage. Is Quora a company that fits such a profile? All pointers (admittedly imperfect) say 'no'. Even going by their latest feature, blogs, it would appear that they're also running out of tricks. Such a feature is often a clear indicator of the flattening of user growth, leading companies to chase down usage growth aggressively to make up for the decline in the former. But a $50 million series B should fly in the face of such an assumption. Well, maybe not. Money can either help you unlock known avenues for growth or it can help you explore unknown avenues. Either option buys time, but with different ends in sight. DAngelo putting up some of his own money certainly points at the latter. It looks like an attempt to buy time to explore. While it is hard to wager what their burn rate should be, it is probably not enough to burn $11 million in two years. Even with the really nutty assumption that they have actually burnt $11 million in 2-years, with the current round they should be good for another 2-3 years. That's enough time to focus purely on how to massively grow the product without having to worry about how will you pay the bills in the coming week. With that perspective in mind, it is easy to see why they're less interested in being a warm-and-cosy small community with great answers that pushes all the right buttons with the power users. Their road ahead is a choice that's already been made. Where they will get to on that road, I don't think anyone knows yet. One thing is certain, though. They'll either win really big, or will flame out pretty badly. They've already boxed themselves into a place where there is little space in-between.
- hollerith 14y ago>I'll . . . ask if they have any other option. The other option would have been to choose not to take VC money -- or to have chosen a "business model" not heavily dependent on high-quality uncompensated contributions from users.
- 14y ago
- kamaal 14y ago>> He presumably has numbers that show that Quora ends up net ahead if they force people to create accounts to read answers. Well you don't have to be a genius to realize this. So as long as there is a unlimited supply of free email accounts, asking for a compulsory log in to do things like reading answers is going to lead to only one thing: Users creating fake id's to read them. Good luck if they remember the login of that fake id next times they come in. Else what you will see is the same user creating as many id's he wants at his disposal. If you by these numbers you are going to get the most misleading figures of number of users your site has. I hope Quora realizes what they are doing.
- snarfy 14y agoQuora is just another set of URLs in my google blacklist.
- uladzislau 14y agoI created a "test" Facebook account which I use for Quora sign in and many other sites. Works like a charm!
- jim_shook 14y agoAnother reason this is dumb is that this is the kind of thing that Google doesn't much like. They don't want to index and rank content highly just for it to be mostly inaccessible. I have no idea how much new traffic to Quora comes from organic search, but I have to imagine its not unsubstantial.
- wslh 14y agoNow Quora reminds me of "Experts Exchange" and other spammy Q&A sites. Just because they hide the questions.
- abp 14y agoA little late to the party, but I want more Users!
- psadri 14y agoIn other words, Quora is trapped in a local maxima.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- mofle 14y agoI just created a Chrome extension that removes the Quora login requirement: https://github.com/sindresorhus/quora-unblocker https://github.com/sindresorhus/quora-unblocker
- mofle 14y agoI also created a Userscript for non-Chrome users: https://github.com/sindresorhus/quora-unblocker-userscript https://github.com/sindresorhus/quora-unblocker-userscript