60 Second Social Media Quora

Eric Wu · Boulder, Colorado
Quora still exists?

Max Woolf · Top Commenter · Carnegie Mellon University · 478 subscribers
Ask that on Quora!

Mircea Goia · Web developer - aspiring filmmaker at Web developer - aspiring filmmaker
Alive and well...

Kevin Simms · Top Commenter · Northwestern
...and way too much press for something nobody uses.

Mircea Goia · Web developer - aspiring filmmaker at Web developer - aspiring filmmaker
If you consider yourself nobody, well...

Michael Glazer · CEO & Founder at Back At You, Inc.
Why is this news. Adding a threading system to comments and allowing images to be embed is pretty basic. In fact, it's like 5 year old technology. Q&A sites have figured this out a long time ago, SodaHead.com, does this and has 3x as much traffic as Quora. The secret sauce that Quora had over all other sites was their high profile commentary from leaders in an industry. They will see, and I know from experience, that as the site grows, the meaningful commentary gets diluted by the noise and radical views of the masses. Quora has lost this and until they find a way to preserve the truly meaningful and expert commentary by authoritative sources, they will struggle and be like every other Q&A site.

Sa Ma · Top Commenter · San Francisco, California
So basically after all we discovered the good old threaded discussion board is the way to go?

Dean Blackburn · Top Commenter
Not as implemented, no. But time will tell, I guess... Right now it's a nightmare, since they've actually rolled out three good ideas at once so they can horrify everyone in combination with threaded-comment-voting-on-animated-GIF-discussions, like this one:

http://www.quora.com/Yishan-Wong/Animated-GIFs/Yay-for-Up-Downvotes-on-Comments

Daniel Jean-Pierre Riveong · General Manager at E-Storm International
Well, Reddit is awesome. So yes, discussion boards are still useful given certain environments.

Semil Shah · Top Commenter · Palo Alto, California
The reason this is *news* (despite the comments below) is because as this commenting system is refined, it "may" provide a window into how Quora may begin to expand outside its own site. For instance, on a site like TechCrunch, Facebook comments seems to have mostly silenced trolling behavior. On the other hand, the inability to comment anonymously has, to be honest, made the comments a bit less interesting, as surely some folks have bit their tongues because they may want to comment without revealing their identity. That's where Quora "could" come in. Since they verify identity but also enable anonymity (with someone watching for bad behavior), a Quora "social plug-in" for commenting could be a nice compromise, not only for TechCrunch, but any sort of media property that wants their audiences to comment. Oh, and these moves also increase engagement metrics.

Max Woolf · Top Commenter · Carnegie Mellon University · 478 subscribers
I think proprietary comment systems are going to fade out soon. It's just 100x easier for websites to implement Facebook Comments or Disqus. I really don't see the advantage over FB comments; at the least, it allows people without Quora accounts to commentate, and it still reduces the anonymity issue.

Jared Lunde
It does, however, allow websites to use and control the data nested in their comments for things like search and page relations.

Avery Lewis · Top Commenter · Head of Product at Getaround
Jared Lunde You can do that with Facebook Comments too, it's just not as easy.

Jeff Navarro · Staff at FTBpro
I agree, Max

Michael Bauser · Top Commenter · Kent State University
What Quora really needs to improve discussion is a "That's a stupid question" button. People who post questions like "What are some favorite quotes from the Office?" are just dragging the site down.

Aleksey Korzun ·
Threaded comments? Votes? Editing? Images? This can be done in a single sprint. Why is rolling out standard set of features news? Quora changed ALT text for it's image! News at 11!

Paid shills.

Edgar Fondevilla Torres
Still closed to new members? Not really a good move...

Nikolas Kyramarios · IT at Archaeological Museum of Ioannina
I need an invitation please!