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I'm acquainted with the founders of Quora, and I don't think making "fast money" was a primary motivation in founding Quora. They set out to create a question/

I'm acquainted with the founders of Quora, and I don't think making "fast money" was a primary motivation in founding Quora. They set out to create a question/answer site with a better user experience and a better community. The business model seems, from the outside, to be the belief that, like Facebook and Twitter, they will make money somehow eventually after becoming a runaway success, even it takes years to monetize.

tokenadult 12y ago
They set out to create a question/answer site with a better user experience and a better community. Their user interface choices always looked seriously weird to anyone familiar with almost any other website. It's beyond annoying to me to see a Quora link shared by friends (and actually quite rare for me to see a Quora link shared by anyone), because I never know if I will be able to read the Quora thread without logging in or not. Today, in this Hacker News thread, both the OP and the links submitted so far have been instantly visible to me, but that is not my usual experience with Quora. Rather, my usual experience, through several changes of Quora policy, has been to see nag screens asking me to sign up before I see any of Quora's content.
- vidarh 12y ago
  For that reason I've largely developed "Quora blindness". The same way I just mentally skip over ads on a page, I'll mentally discount links to Quora as non-existent.
grimlck 12y ago
Actions speak louder than words, and I don't see how requiring logins to view answers results in a better user experience and community. I would guess that since it is socially uncouth to say their motivation for the site is to try to make a lot of money, they instead state a more noble sounding mission whenever asked about motivations.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- dgreensp 12y ago
  I'm not going to defend Quora's actions, but your comment sounds like knee-jerk cynicism to me, especially if you don't know the founders personally, and that irritates me. If you've started a start-up before, you know the mix of a big vision, good intentions, and also some desire for fame and/or fortune that varies from founder to founder. Starting a site like Quora and painstakingly nursing a community of intellectuals into existence would be a pretty dumb way to make fast money, given all the possible business models for doing so.

tokenadult 12y ago

They set out to create a question/answer site with a better user experience and a better community. Their user interface choices always looked seriously weird to anyone familiar with almost any other website. It's beyond annoying to me to see a Quora link shared by friends (and actually quite rare for me to see a Quora link shared by anyone), because I never know if I will be able to read the Quora thread without logging in or not. Today, in this Hacker News thread, both the OP and the links submitted so far have been instantly visible to me, but that is not my usual experience with Quora. Rather, my usual experience, through several changes of Quora policy, has been to see nag screens asking me to sign up before I see any of Quora's content.

vidarh 12y ago
For that reason I've largely developed "Quora blindness". The same way I just mentally skip over ads on a page, I'll mentally discount links to Quora as non-existent.

grimlck 12y ago

Actions speak louder than words, and I don't see how requiring logins to view answers results in a better user experience and community. I would guess that since it is socially uncouth to say their motivation for the site is to try to make a lot of money, they instead state a more noble sounding mission whenever asked about motivations.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
dgreensp 12y ago
I'm not going to defend Quora's actions, but your comment sounds like knee-jerk cynicism to me, especially if you don't know the founders personally, and that irritates me. If you've started a start-up before, you know the mix of a big vision, good intentions, and also some desire for fame and/or fortune that varies from founder to founder. Starting a site like Quora and painstakingly nursing a community of intellectuals into existence would be a pretty dumb way to make fast money, given all the possible business models for doing so.