These days I find myself increasingly use quora to get answers to my questions over just using a Google Search. At times, I even enter my query with "+quora". This is the level of trust I have developed for answers on quora. Here are some reasons that I really like Quora:
- Quality of the content/answers: I use Quora quite extensively and have not really come across any question that is useless or an answer that doesn't provide any relevant information. With its quality management techniques such as upvote/downvote, flagging, community monitors etc. coupled with a robust algorithm, Quora ensures that the crowdsourced content on its website is always of good quality.
- Trust: I see the real identity of the people on Quora and these are the people I can trust without a second thought. Without Quora I would never have had a chance to learn from seasoned product managers like Ian McAllister, Ken Norton etc. An extreme example of real identity I saw on Quora was an answer from a murder who is currently an inmate at San Quentin jail.
- It's fun: I can spend hours reading interesting stuff on quora unlike their competitor sites such as Yahoo or answers.com, reddit. On the other hand, I would kill hours on other social networks and never learn anything. Quora has the skill of retaining people or making them spend more and more time on the site & gain knowledge.
Nevertheless, I believe that Quora has long way to go. It is very critical for Quora to maintain the quality of its content and people as it grows. I already see some repeated questions that end up creating two different threads for the same questions, lot of questions not being answered etc. In addition, it is very critical to manage the quality and growth the moment it decides to monetize. Of course, Quora is not just a philanthropic initiative and cannot sustain without revenue like Wikipedia. Even founders and investors of Quora have talked about monetizing the website in future. Quora needs to to ensure that monetization doesn't hurt the sentiments of its users who have been sharing their wisdom on the website. Here goes my recommendation for future Quora:
- Search: Quora's search functionality is very limited. It just tries to do keyword match. To make Quora a place to get answers to everyone's desired questions, Quora should enhance its search functionality. As a Quora founder, you don't want someone to go to Google to search for answers on Quora.
- Expand into other functional areas, geographical areas and languages: Quora's reach is currently limited to answers related to technology, business, entrepreneurship and venture capital with widespread adoption in United States, India and Brazil. I would like to see Quora being expanded to other functional areas such as Science, Arts, History and Agriculture. I would love to see a day when my dad who is an agriculturist post questions on a disease about his crop in his regional language or share his 30 years of knowledge to help others.
- Monetize/incentivize users while maintaining the quality of content: Currently, Quora has the concept of credits. Quora can expand the credit strategy to develop a system that provides features such as promoted questions, promoted answers and promoted profiles. Promoted content displayed will be a combination of content quality and the bid placed for promoted content. Users can also pay to get answers quickly and answerer can earn money for answering the question within stipulated time.
- Reputation Score and Job Search: Quora reputation score and area of expertise can be used for matching jobs with experts - like stackoverflow career section. It is a great way for organizations to drive passive candidates who could be the best hires.
- Knowledge marketplace: Quora reputation can be leveraged for getting clients for knowledge related services/consulting professionals. You can bid your hourly rate on the website. Quora calculates the actual rate (can be more than or less than what you bid) based on your reputation in specific area. Example: product management, ERP/CRM, Salesforce, Retail.
- Product Marketplace: Quora can also be a marketplace to buy anything that appeared in answers or recommendations by people on the website. Lot of people ask about the right books to refer for various technical and management subjects. It will be a significant value add to the user if s/he can buy the book with a single click. It could also be a software or a SAAS. Quora can have tie ups with Amazon or Google Play, iCloud create this marketplace.
- Quora answer graph: I want to see the social graph of a question. Like who all have answered the question, what is their reputation, who have up/downvoted the question or answer. Also an algorithm to calculate the placeholder based on the reputation of the answerer, appropriateness of the answer, votes and comments. It will be fun to browse that graph that would make me stay for much longer time on quora. That’s exactly quora wants.
- Quora for enterprises: White labeled version or cloud based version of quora for managing enterprise knowledge repository. Or a cloud-based solution for enterprises to manage their knowledge repository.
These are my thoughts about Quora. In a nutshell, I want to see my favourite website grow to be the place for any question I may have and get instant answers with satisfactory quality.
