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Foursquare, Quora, Path: What Becomes Of The Underachievers?

125 points by e15ctr0n 12y ago

ulfw 12y ago
To me, all three are the modern Myspaces - albeit much smaller and insignificant in comparison to back then. The brands have been around and stand for something, which will make it hard to pivot and instill excitement in the user base. To me, all of the three have lost their raison d'etre. Quora had a lot of potential, but only a subset of people actively used the service and formed it into something that won't appeal to the masses. Foursquare was great for the unique check-in/gamification thing, but after Facebook made check-in just another feature, there really wasn't a reason to go to Foursquare anymore. With checkins gone and Yelp being as big and well established as it is, there is even less reason to go there now. Path frankly I never thought had any reason to be there in the first place - no idea how to pivot that thing into anything useful. A "custom-designed, one-of-a-kind bespoke app" if you will...
fidotron 12y ago
And of the three only Foursquare got anywhere close to mainstream conciousness, but failed to convert it. As others have observed, the location and local information space seems to be a real killer. Ultimately though they are simply attempts to create get rich quick fads with no compelling hook for normal people. I think it only puzzles those inside the bubble that such things don't fly too readily.
Alex_MJ 12y ago
I'm still baffled at how everyone considers these startups to be "underachieving". In terms of becoming the next facebook or twitter? Well, no shit. That's a borderline impossible standard. Compared to 95% of their peers (which are, at least statistically, true underachievers in that they never made it into the mainstream or at least the tech-mainstream, or didn't survive long enough that we would recognize them today), they're waaaay on the right side of the bell curve. Indeed. What a bunch of slackers!
- chippy 12y ago
  Completely agree. Underachieving according to what criteria? The criteria of modern capitalism of high velocity ever increasing profit for their investors and shareholders. Not about popularity, sustainability or user base, but money.
  - michaelt 12y ago
    I think they are interpreting pivots as a sign that the founders and/or investors wanted to change direction, because the previous direction wasn't succeeding. I'm all for small, sustainable sites which provide a service and don't try to monetise too desperately. But when you take $50 million in VC funding, surely the founders know they're boarding the ten-times-return-or-bust train?
  - jeffdavis 12y ago
    "Not about popularity, sustainability or user base, but money." By what criteria would you say that those companies are sustainable?
- Domenic_S 12y ago
  > I'm still baffled at how everyone considers these startups to be "underachieving" Explaining that was the entire point of the article. Given that startups by definition need fast growth ('definition' being pg's definition, as explained in the article) and given that the growth of these startups has slowed dramatically, these startups are underachieving. Maybe 'underperforming' would be a better word to use, since we're all familiar with that term as it relates to companies large and small.
- revelation 12y ago
  So, if they don't become the next Facebook or Twitter, what are they to become? I don't think any one mentioned company is currently profitable, they might not even have any revenue. If they are not going to have that explosive growth, they are no different from your neighborhood car shop. But that one will still be around next year since it is actually running a profitable business.
- 12y ago
ilamont 12y ago
They have scaled from scrappy outsiders into significant players. They have millions of faithful users. While it’s true they have succeeded well within their founders’ wildest dreams, they are still among the best of the best, or they wouldn’t have gotten to where they are today. "Scrappy outsiders?" I always felt Path and Quora were overhyped Valley darlings heavily funded right out of the gate. As for the comment that they are "still among the best of the best", I think it's only possible to make that claim on narrow criteria -- for instance, Quora's Q&A quality in a few verticals, and FourSquare for its check-in data.
- contextual 12y ago
  Scrappy outsiders... best of the best... that's called 'sucking up'.
- kmfrk 12y ago
  TechCrunch in particular hyped the shit out of Quora, as many of us struggled to figure out the point of it.
  - leorocky 12y ago
    I think the point of Quora was just to get engagement up with whatever it took to keep people posting and upvoting. It was addicting, but forget getting answers to questions unless you were one of the sites better known users. Quora is the Zynga of the Q&A format, and created about as much value.
    - jaredsohn 12y ago
      >forget getting answers to questions unless you were one of the sites better known users That doesn't match my experience. I have only ever asked one question on Quora, and at the time I had only written a single answer on an unrelated subject. My question was about the value of staying in the official hotel vs an Airbnb when attending a conference and I got a quality response from a cofounder of Lanyrd.
    - arfliw 12y ago
wpietri 12y ago
They all make me wonder if money is too loose again. I look at all of them and ask: did they really need to get to such scale to learn that they had big issues? I have the most sympathy for Foursquare, in that their previous incarnation got purchased and ignored by Google [1], so I can see why Foursquare's founders just decided to do the same thing over again. But it seems like they could have noticed these problems 2 or 3 years ago. Quora and Path, though, have spent an awful lot of money in ways that make me wonder if they would have done better if they had a lot less cash in the bank, and thus more need to prove their hypotheses in the small. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodgeball_(service) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodgeball_(service)
- Spockulus_Rift 12y ago
  No reason to have sympathy fir that rich dipmunch Crowley.
trhway 12y ago
they were fads. Variations/customizations in one way or another of a social networking. The social wave has passed and the crystallization in its wake has left only options significantly differentiated in parameter space from each other - FB, Twitter, Snapchat, WhatsApp.
- Domenic_S 12y ago
  I don't know that the social wave has passed, but it does seem like single-serving social apps are on the way out unless they have a difficult-to-replicate twist to them (like Secret or whisper).
cowholio4 12y ago
There is so much more to Foursquare than just checkins! It's such an amazing service; and not for what you may think. It's the best tool to find new, popular or places that I would like based of things I already like or do. Not only is Foursquare's recommendation engine great; the lists are awesome. It's actually been sad to see them gradually make lists less visible. At least, they still have the TODO list which gives me an easy way to find a place I have been meaning to go. On the venue profile, they used to feature the lists that users made containing that venue. So what I would do is find a place I like and then I could easily find other places based on the list's it was a member of. It makes traveling so much more fun. The whole social thing about Foursquare is it's weakest point. I don't know why they are emphasizing it so much. Firstly, only an extremely small subset of my friends are on Foursquare and secondly I have enough social networks. Yes, because of Foursquare I ran into some friends in my neighborhood that I would not have otherwise. But really that's not nearly as cool as the random hotel costume party I found that was trending one night. Or the countless coffee shops, bars and restaurants I discovered while traveling. So to me the strengths of Foursquare are: * Recommendation engine. * Lists ( TODO and Public Lists ) * International usage. * chance social encounters with friends.
- dsirijus 12y ago
  The whole social thing about Foursquare is it's weakest point. I don't know why they are emphasizing it so much. Firstly, only an extremely small subset of my friends are on Foursquare and secondly I have enough social networks. No it's not. For most people (on whose crowd-sourced data they live on) main motivation to checking in somewhere is pure narcissism and showing off. Nothing more.
  - SkyMarshal 12y ago
    Or the discounts most places offer for checking in. And you'll never know the extent to which each is the case.
- TarpitCarnivore 12y ago
  > There is so much more to Foursquare than just checkins! I argue with friends all the time about how Foursquare is a better tool for finding and rating establishments than Yelp. The simple like it/dislike it makes it a much easier way to rate, not to mention they don't allow for long winded rants much like you see on Yelp. I too also use the Lists feature a lot, especially when I know I'm going to be traveling to a new area. Perhaps the bloggers constant referral to Foursquare as a check-in service is what has kept it from "growing", though they didn't help themselves either by trying to not highlight the other features more.
ryanmim 12y ago
Quora is the only one of these that interests me primarily because most answers are posted by people using their actual names. Yeah it's not perfect and it has a lot of issues, but this is a big selling point for me. There are advantages to anonymity, but there are also advantages to sticking faces onto posts. Quora should be the place for the latter, and should play that up more.
- aikah 12y ago
  just my opinion but the login wall totally kills Quora.just saying.Not going to log into that stuff just to read an answer. And the UI/UX hasnt been updated for years.Doesnt feel modern. Just my 2 cents about why i dont use Quora. Could have been a great tool to build E-Reputation for engineers.
  - ryanmim 12y ago
    Yup, the login wall is a major PITA. Enforcing that for people who simply want to read the content is a mistake IMO. However, Quora made the decision that it would force enough signups for it to be worth it...not sure I agree, but they have more data available on the issue than I do.
  - jqm 12y ago
    Exactly why I have never even visited Quora. Facebook login required? Forgitaboutit. I've never had a facebook account and never will (sure, I know you maybe can use another service...but just it isn't worth my time).
    - walterbell 12y ago
      Quora was started by ex-Facebook CTO / VP Eng, who previously lead "Facebook Platform", i.e. the login requirement now seen at Quora. However, most of the world moved on. http://pando.com/2013/07/23/move-fast-break-things-the-sad-story-of-platform-facebooks-gigantic-missed-opportunity/ http://pando.com/2013/07/23/move-fast-break-things-the-sad-s... http://www.crunchbase.com/person/adam-d-angelo http://www.crunchbase.com/person/adam-d-angelo
natural219 12y ago
I love reading outsiders flail when trying to understand something like Quora by thinking in terms of naive, business-as-usual lenses.
- EdwardDiego 12y ago
  So in your narrative, who are in the insiders? And in what terms are they thinking as opposed to the 'outsiders'?
- ZenPro 12y ago
  I love it when insiders flail thinking they are rewriting the rules of business. I also love it when they completely misunderstand the term business-as-usual. The opposite of business as usual is a project. A temporary , uncertain venture with a defined finish point. By your statement Quora is simply a project, not a business. Keep up the superior attitude; it's working well for you.
uptown 12y ago
What's Quora's business model? Maybe I'm just missing it, but I don't see any way for them to make money. No advertising. No premium accounts. Anybody know their eventual plan for revenue?
- adventured 12y ago
  They have no business model. That's the problem they're facing. They expected higher growth and higher user numbers. They expected to heavily displace sites like Answers.com and Yahoo Answers, and that did not happen - both of those are mainstream, have not lost traffic due to Quora, and Quora has never managed to go mainstream in terms of scale. Quora has to abandon the Q&A space as they've known it (aka pivot). There's no possibility of ever, under any circumstances, justifying a $1 billion valuation, much less say a $3 billion valuation (which their most recent investors have to be hoping for at least), in the traditional Q&A space. Answers.com is three times the size of Quora in terms of traffic, and they're worth maybe 1/5th what Quora is.
- prostoalex 12y ago
  There's Quora Credits http://www.quora.com/credits http://www.quora.com/credits which you earn for providing answers that are upvoted by others, which are spendable on making your questions more prominent. I'm not perfectly clear on a use case, where someone would pay to buy up a bunch of points to make sure they get answers from qualified people, but I can see this model working within StackOverflow and some other verticals.
ninguem2 12y ago
Is the actor who played Jango Fett supposed to be the poster boy for underachievers?
- EdwardDiego 12y ago
  It's not really appropriate, given the movie's content - the main character, Jake "the Muss", destroyed his family through his alcohol abuse and horrific violence directed against them (see the film Once Were Warriors). In this film, he tries to deal with the consequences of what he has wrought. It's a pretty bleak story, and it has little relevance to "a bunch of overhyped and heavily investor backed startups didn't pay off."
digitalzombie 12y ago
Quora is annoying as hell. You need to log in to see the answers or do anything. Talked to one of the dev why they do this and he sorta dodge the question, I got the hint so I left it as is. Quora is useless to me in general and Stackoverflow is much better. Path, I've heard of path and I don't care for it. I've moved away from Facebook and hardly use it anymore. So yeah, the mass migration of Facebook and other social site is probably a trend. Foursquare, I admire it a lot. I love the business model and the app is pretty decent, better than Yelp that's for sure.
- jkbyc 12y ago
  It also does some shady things to increase engagement. I sent a Quora link to a friend, she created an account to be able to read it and the next day I got an email from Quora that she followed me (it also said that she is already following four other people). In reality, she did nothing. She just read the article, didn't follow anyone.
  - smoyer 12y ago
    On June 4th I asked Quora to permanently delete my account. When I started reading answers there, I don't think you had to "sign up to read" as the front page now requests (without an account). It's gradually escalated what's required until I just found it too onerous to participate. I don't want to share my interests with them and I certainly don't want to share my contacts list with them. I'm probably an outlier but I really only found a couple interesting questions a month, so I don't think I'll miss Quora.
- cpeterso 12y ago
  You can read Quora articles without signing up by appending "&share=1" to the URL. The "Quora Share" Firefox add-on will fix up Quora URLs automatically: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/quora-share https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/quora-share
sparkzilla 12y ago
My analysis of Quora joining Y Combinator: http://newslines.org/blog/why-quora-joined-y-combinator/ http://newslines.org/blog/why-quora-joined-y-combinator/ Short version: the complete lack of business model forces Quora to seek out the next stage of investors.
- arfliw 12y ago
  I don't think you understand the type of investors that show up at demo day. Hint: they aren't writing the 8 and 9 figure checks you think Quora is hoping they'll write them.
Choronzon 12y ago
For those of us outside California Quora seems little more than a silicon valley circle jerk.A better branded version of the old experts exchange,though its not hard to brand yourself better than the company with the second worst url in internet history(I wonder how mole station nursery is doing these days?). The very the people who have benefited from the internet revolution move to limit access to publicly provided information,information they themselves did not even create.Nice job kicking out the ladders from under you. If I ever get hit on the head and want to live life as some someone else's virtual pet ill be sure to check out foursquare as well(oh you went to the pub,who's a good boy?Have a virtual cookie). Stack Overflow does a lot wrong,half of my favourite answers are marked as closed for some arbitrary reason but at least it can provide open and accurate answers to questions in specific problem domains. In the land of the blind the one eyed man is truly king.
- pestaa 12y ago
  Funny, didn't hear about mole station before. I can only imagine the amount of confusion.

125 points by e15ctr0n 12y ago

ulfw 12y ago

To me, all three are the modern Myspaces - albeit much smaller and insignificant in comparison to back then. The brands have been around and stand for something, which will make it hard to pivot and instill excitement in the user base. To me, all of the three have lost their raison d'etre. Quora had a lot of potential, but only a subset of people actively used the service and formed it into something that won't appeal to the masses. Foursquare was great for the unique check-in/gamification thing, but after Facebook made check-in just another feature, there really wasn't a reason to go to Foursquare anymore. With checkins gone and Yelp being as big and well established as it is, there is even less reason to go there now. Path frankly I never thought had any reason to be there in the first place - no idea how to pivot that thing into anything useful. A "custom-designed, one-of-a-kind bespoke app" if you will...

fidotron 12y ago

And of the three only Foursquare got anywhere close to mainstream conciousness, but failed to convert it. As others have observed, the location and local information space seems to be a real killer. Ultimately though they are simply attempts to create get rich quick fads with no compelling hook for normal people. I think it only puzzles those inside the bubble that such things don't fly too readily.

Alex_MJ 12y ago

I'm still baffled at how everyone considers these startups to be "underachieving". In terms of becoming the next facebook or twitter? Well, no shit. That's a borderline impossible standard. Compared to 95% of their peers (which are, at least statistically, true underachievers in that they never made it into the mainstream or at least the tech-mainstream, or didn't survive long enough that we would recognize them today), they're waaaay on the right side of the bell curve. Indeed. What a bunch of slackers!

chippy 12y ago
Completely agree. Underachieving according to what criteria? The criteria of modern capitalism of high velocity ever increasing profit for their investors and shareholders. Not about popularity, sustainability or user base, but money.
- michaelt 12y ago
  I think they are interpreting pivots as a sign that the founders and/or investors wanted to change direction, because the previous direction wasn't succeeding. I'm all for small, sustainable sites which provide a service and don't try to monetise too desperately. But when you take $50 million in VC funding, surely the founders know they're boarding the ten-times-return-or-bust train?
- jeffdavis 12y ago
  "Not about popularity, sustainability or user base, but money." By what criteria would you say that those companies are sustainable?
Domenic_S 12y ago
> I'm still baffled at how everyone considers these startups to be "underachieving" Explaining that was the entire point of the article. Given that startups by definition need fast growth ('definition' being pg's definition, as explained in the article) and given that the growth of these startups has slowed dramatically, these startups are underachieving. Maybe 'underperforming' would be a better word to use, since we're all familiar with that term as it relates to companies large and small.
revelation 12y ago
So, if they don't become the next Facebook or Twitter, what are they to become? I don't think any one mentioned company is currently profitable, they might not even have any revenue. If they are not going to have that explosive growth, they are no different from your neighborhood car shop. But that one will still be around next year since it is actually running a profitable business.
12y ago

ilamont 12y ago

They have scaled from scrappy outsiders into significant players. They have millions of faithful users. While it’s true they have succeeded well within their founders’ wildest dreams, they are still among the best of the best, or they wouldn’t have gotten to where they are today. "Scrappy outsiders?" I always felt Path and Quora were overhyped Valley darlings heavily funded right out of the gate. As for the comment that they are "still among the best of the best", I think it's only possible to make that claim on narrow criteria -- for instance, Quora's Q&A quality in a few verticals, and FourSquare for its check-in data.

contextual 12y ago
Scrappy outsiders... best of the best... that's called 'sucking up'.
kmfrk 12y ago
TechCrunch in particular hyped the shit out of Quora, as many of us struggled to figure out the point of it.
- leorocky 12y ago
  I think the point of Quora was just to get engagement up with whatever it took to keep people posting and upvoting. It was addicting, but forget getting answers to questions unless you were one of the sites better known users. Quora is the Zynga of the Q&A format, and created about as much value.
  - jaredsohn 12y ago
    >forget getting answers to questions unless you were one of the sites better known users That doesn't match my experience. I have only ever asked one question on Quora, and at the time I had only written a single answer on an unrelated subject. My question was about the value of staying in the official hotel vs an Airbnb when attending a conference and I got a quality response from a cofounder of Lanyrd.
  - arfliw 12y ago

wpietri 12y ago

They all make me wonder if money is too loose again. I look at all of them and ask: did they really need to get to such scale to learn that they had big issues? I have the most sympathy for Foursquare, in that their previous incarnation got purchased and ignored by Google [1], so I can see why Foursquare's founders just decided to do the same thing over again. But it seems like they could have noticed these problems 2 or 3 years ago. Quora and Path, though, have spent an awful lot of money in ways that make me wonder if they would have done better if they had a lot less cash in the bank, and thus more need to prove their hypotheses in the small. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodgeball_(service) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodgeball_(service)

Spockulus_Rift 12y ago
No reason to have sympathy fir that rich dipmunch Crowley.

trhway 12y ago

they were fads. Variations/customizations in one way or another of a social networking. The social wave has passed and the crystallization in its wake has left only options significantly differentiated in parameter space from each other - FB, Twitter, Snapchat, WhatsApp.

Domenic_S 12y ago
I don't know that the social wave has passed, but it does seem like single-serving social apps are on the way out unless they have a difficult-to-replicate twist to them (like Secret or whisper).

cowholio4 12y ago

There is so much more to Foursquare than just checkins! It's such an amazing service; and not for what you may think. It's the best tool to find new, popular or places that I would like based of things I already like or do. Not only is Foursquare's recommendation engine great; the lists are awesome. It's actually been sad to see them gradually make lists less visible. At least, they still have the TODO list which gives me an easy way to find a place I have been meaning to go. On the venue profile, they used to feature the lists that users made containing that venue. So what I would do is find a place I like and then I could easily find other places based on the list's it was a member of. It makes traveling so much more fun. The whole social thing about Foursquare is it's weakest point. I don't know why they are emphasizing it so much. Firstly, only an extremely small subset of my friends are on Foursquare and secondly I have enough social networks. Yes, because of Foursquare I ran into some friends in my neighborhood that I would not have otherwise. But really that's not nearly as cool as the random hotel costume party I found that was trending one night. Or the countless coffee shops, bars and restaurants I discovered while traveling. So to me the strengths of Foursquare are: * Recommendation engine. * Lists ( TODO and Public Lists ) * International usage. * chance social encounters with friends.

dsirijus 12y ago
The whole social thing about Foursquare is it's weakest point. I don't know why they are emphasizing it so much. Firstly, only an extremely small subset of my friends are on Foursquare and secondly I have enough social networks. No it's not. For most people (on whose crowd-sourced data they live on) main motivation to checking in somewhere is pure narcissism and showing off. Nothing more.
- SkyMarshal 12y ago
  Or the discounts most places offer for checking in. And you'll never know the extent to which each is the case.
TarpitCarnivore 12y ago
> There is so much more to Foursquare than just checkins! I argue with friends all the time about how Foursquare is a better tool for finding and rating establishments than Yelp. The simple like it/dislike it makes it a much easier way to rate, not to mention they don't allow for long winded rants much like you see on Yelp. I too also use the Lists feature a lot, especially when I know I'm going to be traveling to a new area. Perhaps the bloggers constant referral to Foursquare as a check-in service is what has kept it from "growing", though they didn't help themselves either by trying to not highlight the other features more.

ryanmim 12y ago

Quora is the only one of these that interests me primarily because most answers are posted by people using their actual names. Yeah it's not perfect and it has a lot of issues, but this is a big selling point for me. There are advantages to anonymity, but there are also advantages to sticking faces onto posts. Quora should be the place for the latter, and should play that up more.

aikah 12y ago
just my opinion but the login wall totally kills Quora.just saying.Not going to log into that stuff just to read an answer. And the UI/UX hasnt been updated for years.Doesnt feel modern. Just my 2 cents about why i dont use Quora. Could have been a great tool to build E-Reputation for engineers.
- ryanmim 12y ago
  Yup, the login wall is a major PITA. Enforcing that for people who simply want to read the content is a mistake IMO. However, Quora made the decision that it would force enough signups for it to be worth it...not sure I agree, but they have more data available on the issue than I do.
- jqm 12y ago
  Exactly why I have never even visited Quora. Facebook login required? Forgitaboutit. I've never had a facebook account and never will (sure, I know you maybe can use another service...but just it isn't worth my time).
  - walterbell 12y ago
    Quora was started by ex-Facebook CTO / VP Eng, who previously lead "Facebook Platform", i.e. the login requirement now seen at Quora. However, most of the world moved on. http://pando.com/2013/07/23/move-fast-break-things-the-sad-story-of-platform-facebooks-gigantic-missed-opportunity/ http://pando.com/2013/07/23/move-fast-break-things-the-sad-s... http://www.crunchbase.com/person/adam-d-angelo http://www.crunchbase.com/person/adam-d-angelo

natural219 12y ago

I love reading outsiders flail when trying to understand something like Quora by thinking in terms of naive, business-as-usual lenses.

EdwardDiego 12y ago
So in your narrative, who are in the insiders? And in what terms are they thinking as opposed to the 'outsiders'?
ZenPro 12y ago
I love it when insiders flail thinking they are rewriting the rules of business. I also love it when they completely misunderstand the term business-as-usual. The opposite of business as usual is a project. A temporary , uncertain venture with a defined finish point. By your statement Quora is simply a project, not a business. Keep up the superior attitude; it's working well for you.

uptown 12y ago

What's Quora's business model? Maybe I'm just missing it, but I don't see any way for them to make money. No advertising. No premium accounts. Anybody know their eventual plan for revenue?

adventured 12y ago
They have no business model. That's the problem they're facing. They expected higher growth and higher user numbers. They expected to heavily displace sites like Answers.com and Yahoo Answers, and that did not happen - both of those are mainstream, have not lost traffic due to Quora, and Quora has never managed to go mainstream in terms of scale. Quora has to abandon the Q&A space as they've known it (aka pivot). There's no possibility of ever, under any circumstances, justifying a $1 billion valuation, much less say a $3 billion valuation (which their most recent investors have to be hoping for at least), in the traditional Q&A space. Answers.com is three times the size of Quora in terms of traffic, and they're worth maybe 1/5th what Quora is.
prostoalex 12y ago
There's Quora Credits http://www.quora.com/credits http://www.quora.com/credits which you earn for providing answers that are upvoted by others, which are spendable on making your questions more prominent. I'm not perfectly clear on a use case, where someone would pay to buy up a bunch of points to make sure they get answers from qualified people, but I can see this model working within StackOverflow and some other verticals.

ninguem2 12y ago

Is the actor who played Jango Fett supposed to be the poster boy for underachievers?

EdwardDiego 12y ago
It's not really appropriate, given the movie's content - the main character, Jake "the Muss", destroyed his family through his alcohol abuse and horrific violence directed against them (see the film Once Were Warriors). In this film, he tries to deal with the consequences of what he has wrought. It's a pretty bleak story, and it has little relevance to "a bunch of overhyped and heavily investor backed startups didn't pay off."

digitalzombie 12y ago

Quora is annoying as hell. You need to log in to see the answers or do anything. Talked to one of the dev why they do this and he sorta dodge the question, I got the hint so I left it as is. Quora is useless to me in general and Stackoverflow is much better. Path, I've heard of path and I don't care for it. I've moved away from Facebook and hardly use it anymore. So yeah, the mass migration of Facebook and other social site is probably a trend. Foursquare, I admire it a lot. I love the business model and the app is pretty decent, better than Yelp that's for sure.

jkbyc 12y ago
It also does some shady things to increase engagement. I sent a Quora link to a friend, she created an account to be able to read it and the next day I got an email from Quora that she followed me (it also said that she is already following four other people). In reality, she did nothing. She just read the article, didn't follow anyone.
- smoyer 12y ago
  On June 4th I asked Quora to permanently delete my account. When I started reading answers there, I don't think you had to "sign up to read" as the front page now requests (without an account). It's gradually escalated what's required until I just found it too onerous to participate. I don't want to share my interests with them and I certainly don't want to share my contacts list with them. I'm probably an outlier but I really only found a couple interesting questions a month, so I don't think I'll miss Quora.
cpeterso 12y ago
You can read Quora articles without signing up by appending "&share=1" to the URL. The "Quora Share" Firefox add-on will fix up Quora URLs automatically: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/quora-share https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/quora-share

sparkzilla 12y ago

My analysis of Quora joining Y Combinator: http://newslines.org/blog/why-quora-joined-y-combinator/ http://newslines.org/blog/why-quora-joined-y-combinator/ Short version: the complete lack of business model forces Quora to seek out the next stage of investors.

arfliw 12y ago
I don't think you understand the type of investors that show up at demo day. Hint: they aren't writing the 8 and 9 figure checks you think Quora is hoping they'll write them.

Choronzon 12y ago

For those of us outside California Quora seems little more than a silicon valley circle jerk.A better branded version of the old experts exchange,though its not hard to brand yourself better than the company with the second worst url in internet history(I wonder how mole station nursery is doing these days?). The very the people who have benefited from the internet revolution move to limit access to publicly provided information,information they themselves did not even create.Nice job kicking out the ladders from under you. If I ever get hit on the head and want to live life as some someone else's virtual pet ill be sure to check out foursquare as well(oh you went to the pub,who's a good boy?Have a virtual cookie). Stack Overflow does a lot wrong,half of my favourite answers are marked as closed for some arbitrary reason but at least it can provide open and accurate answers to questions in specific problem domains. In the land of the blind the one eyed man is truly king.

pestaa 12y ago
Funny, didn't hear about mole station before. I can only imagine the amount of confusion.