It does sound like the name of an older woman, doesn’t it? Quora may well be an elderly woman down the street who makes a mean apple pie, but the Quora in question is a website.
Quora is a website where users can ask and answer specific questions on all manner of subjects. But you already do this on Yahoo, Facebook or Wikpedia, so what’s so bright and shiny about Quora? On those other sites you can more easily fool the gatekeepers as it were.
On some user generated site you can tell that some of the people who are praising a restaurant or talking about a subject are doing so because they have a stake in said enterprise. Maybe they work there, own the place or just asked too many of their friends to post or comment the same thing over and over.
All of the comments on Quora are sourced by the person who wrote it. That is good because you know that it’s not a comment spammer and that comment also has more weight and validity behind it. The other day on Quora somebody asked a question about acting and Hollywood. Ashton Kutcher answered the person.
Regardless of your opinion about Ashton Kutcher, he knows much more about acting than most of the other people who may comment about that question.
You can follow certain areas of interest, so when a query is posted that you have knowledge on you can do so. The content of Quora is also very easy to share. Granted they are on most of the other Q & A sites too, but it’s just a bit easier on Quora.
Quora requires you to create a profile using your real name and a twitter or Facebook profile. There could be some deeper technical reason why they require it, but the most obvious is that it keeps the spammers out. This also keeps out businesses from setting up a Quora profile and simply responding to questions in their arena.
Quora is an interesting site to research topics and get a really fresh perspective. The comments are those that you haven’t heard before and it’s not some press release that’s out just to pump up a product.
