Curious on Quora?
While Facebook and Twitter clearly have a strong hold on the networking and news side of social media, I’ve been blown away this week with my discovery of Quora. While trying to get my friends and followers on other networks involved this week, one response came in more than any other — “Really? Another site to check in? Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare? I don’t think I need anymore social media”
My answer to this is plain and simple: yes, one more site — and you won’t regret it.
For inquisitive people, Quora is an amazing outlet for finding knowledge on any topic, person or event. While Twitter has a lockdown on breaking news, the possibilities for Quora are endless. Also worth a mention are the amazing possibilities for journalists. This site can open up a lot of doors for crowd sourcing and information hunting.
But first, let me explain some of the basics to people who are still unsure of what this is, how it works and why they should use it.
Quora is based on questions. Or another way of saying this: Quora is based on the collective wealth of knowledge from experts around the world. You might call it — knowledge based social media. In a job posting for the site on May 26, 2009, co-founder Charlie Cheever wrote:
We’re working on building a community-generated database of the trusted information that interests people most.
After nine months of development and a beta period in 2010 Quora’s about page from the official launch in June of 2010 went into a little more depth describing the sites functionality:
Quora is a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it. The most important thing is to have each question page become the best possible resource for someone who wants to know about the question.
One way you can think of it is as a cache for the research that people do looking things up on the web and asking other people. Eventually, when you see a link to a question page on Quora, your feeling should be: “Oh, great! That’s going to have all the information I want about that.” It’s also a place where new stuff–that no one has written about yet–can get pulled onto the web.
So — users can pose questions, answer questions or edit another person’s answer (or question) on just about any topic.
Someone yesterday asked me: “Isn’t that like Wikipedia?”
While both sites deal with knowledge; however, on Quora, you can follow users (like on Facebook or Twitter). However you can also follow topics and questions which along with your friends or followers activity will appear in a newsfeed similar to what you would see on Facebook. However, what makes this very unique compared to something like Wikipedia is all content is tied back to actual people.
Users fill out biographical information per subject they are following. When you answer a question — your bio, specific to that topic will be available to other users. This helps source information and gives you an idea of what type of background “an expert” has whereas on Wikipedia you kind of just accept it might not be accurate.
Open vs. Closed Circuit Social Media
This has been a big topic of interest for me for awhile. I think a lot of social media can be classified into two categories — open and closed circuit.
The easiest examples of these are Facebook and Twitter. I would call Facebook a closed circuit social media network. Provided you setup your privacy controls, most of your information will only be available to people you are connected to (and often, people they are connected to). This makes Facebook (at least on a user level) a place for real life connections in a digital world — but those connections have a closed circuit.
However, on Twitter — words, people and topics are searchable to anyone. These topics, people and Tweets are also indexed by Google which makes the information open to all and searchable to all. You won’t find too many closed doors here. This open circuit form of social media allows for information as well as users profiles to go viral. Although this can happen on Facebook — it takes the action of a lof of people for a topic, event or person to appear on everyone’s news feed.
Quora fits the open circuit model of social media. Anyone can search or follow a topic, question — or, search for a person or follow a person. The searchability and usability of this site make it extremely powerful in making information viral.
Possibilities for Journalists
While I am describing the possibilities above in terms of general topics, the possibilities for live news events here is massive. For citizens, netizens (sorry, normally I hate that word) as well as journalists — Quora can be used in a real time manor to learn about what’s happening with non anonymous voices sourcing information. While on Twitter its easy enough to find out whats happening from “@expert_anonymous_handle” Quora will give citizens and journalists background on who is saying what — while also allowing room for dialogue and integration of some rich media into that dialogue.
Right now, I’m following the updates on a question: Are journalists getting story leads from Quora yet?
Within the answer to the question, multiple examples of journalists using Quora to find leads and even source information are given, including this list Quora built list: What third parties have republished Quora content?
Credibility for the Inquisitive
Some people don’t care if they don’t know an answer to a question. I am not one of those people. As about 100 questions pop into my head per hour, I find myself constantly looking up things on Wikipedia with a degree of skepticism. With Quora, dialogue that follows questions and answers can really help a user get an idea of validity in an answer — whereas in Wikipedia you might only see a note that says: “This information hasn’t been validated.”
Furthermore, it seems a lot of credibile people are using the site. Lydia Dishman writes in Fast Company in an article titled “Q&A Site Quora Builds Buzz With A-List Answerers”:
What … becomes evident while clicking around Quora, is that serious heavy-hitters are answering questions there. Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz offers his opinion of the movie The Social Network. Google Images product manager Nate Smith explains how color image search works. Foursquare’s head of business development talks about what it’s like to work for founder Dennis Crowley. Twitter’s Pierre Legrain explains the cost-per-follow principle for Promoted AccountsM. And AOL co-founder Steve Case answers how much it cost to mail everyone those CDs back in the 1990s.
Credibility, usability, searchability: while bringing knowledge to people and people to knowledge
These elements which make up this site are a fantastic combo not really seen in other social media sites. After six months of the official launch the company is reporting an $86 million valuation with over 500,000 user, although this (user number) is apparently debated on Quora in a question here. Latest figure on that post is: “Today 1/3/2011 at 9:00am EST it reached 547,777.”
Links:
- Quora
- About Quora
- Follow me on Quora
- “Q&A Site Quora Builds Buzz With A-List Answerers” by Lydia Dishmant
- How do I get started using Quora?
- What do people find most useful about Quora?
