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technology
thetr bune MARCH 2012
What Does Quora Have To Say? Akilesh Sethu
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nformation and knowledge have been irreplaceable entities that one generation has passed on to the next since the beginning of time. While Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers and Ask seem to have taken the sharing of knowledge one step further, they do not have that significant “people factor”. In 2008, StackOverflow introduced a way for coders and software engineers to look up an extensive database of questions and answers, added to which was an incentive for quality answers and maintenance of good user profiles. Technology companies value a person’s indulgence in StackOverflow during the job application process since their presence in StackOverflow indicates their level of knowledge and expertise. While StackOverflow answers the problem for coders, Quora aims to take it one step further. Quora (founded by Adam D’angelo and Charlie Cheever, ex-Facebook employees) is a website meant for people to engage in conversations over topics and questions that greatly interest them. The Quora team intends the product to be a knowledge bank for people to refer to, add and learn from, through the ump-
teen number of conversations possible over the millions of topics in this world. Even though Yahoo Answers is a product focused on a similar area, Quora is a better executed product with the “people” element kept in mind. Firstly, in terms of im-
Quora is a better executed product with the “people” element kept in mind plementation, Quora is a really simple product, which makes it easier for adopters to grasp it quickly. The User Interface is not imposing and it is contentrich. Quora promotes actual names and credentials, which validates the answer given for a particular question. For example, there are questions from people about movies like the Titanic. While the correctness of the answer from a random person is questionable, it really adds a lot to its authenticity when it comes from the Writer or the Producer of the movie. You can follow topics, Boards, Questions, People,
vote for answers and so on. There have actually been cases where people have gotten jobs through Quora due to their active presence in the website. Quora, in a way, presents your knowledge and topics of interest to the rest of the world. The main issue Quora seems to be facing right now is adoption: it still seems extremely technologically-focused. There is also another issue of valid and correct answers being voted down and removed by other users. While there seem to be moderators who do active monitoring, it might be more difficult when usage increases. Rumour has it that the team is currently developing an algorithm to determine the level of relevance of the answer to the question in co-relation with his expertise in the field. It is a tricky road ahead for Quora. They need to work on pushing the product to the non-techies of the world and, at the same time, ensure they do not turn into another Yahoo Answers. One way or another, a tool like Quora is a necessary component in this world. Even if Quora does not succeed, some other similar company definitely will in the future.
PHOTO | GoodNCrazy, Flickr Commons
‘Pin’sanity A
ttempting to copy a huge company like Facebook to make profit is one thing. But a start-up run by 10 people getting similar treatment is something totally different. Pinterest, the hottest start-up of 2011, has seen such an exponential growth over the last few months that investors are comparing it to Facebook back in its early days. In November, the number of page views had grown by over 2000% compared to the previous June. The company raised about $27 million in funding around October, with reputed VC firms like Andreessen Horowitz as one of its investors. The last round pushed the valuation of the company to $200 million: all this while the company is still in an invite-only version of the website! While many are signing up for the service now, the website has been around for about two years or so. With the female population being the majority of its users, Pinterest serves as the latest self-expression engine along with Facebook and Twitter. The amount of information that can be found on the web is staggering. A filter which determines what we might like based on the items we like, helps in in-
creasing the value of time spent on the Internet, and the useful knowledge obtained in the process. This curation is taken care of by what one could term as “Selective Follow”. Unlike Twitter and Facebook, where we get to know all the tweets and status message of others, Pinterest lets you to follow only those interests of the user that matches yours. This ensures you are still in touch with the user, while at the same time not having to listen to his/her views on how awesome your favourite pair of shoes really is. From the individual user’s perspective, Pinterest represents your interests around the web, similar to Facebook representing your relationships. While all this is good from the users’ point of view, investors are putting their money on what it could mean in the future. Facebook nailed the social graph of the people; startups like Pinterest are now gunning to work out the Interest Graph of the users. An Interest Graph presents a way to target ads with higher click rate, which directly co-relates to bigger revenues.Pinterest has rattled the tech community for the last 6-8 months or so. Hopefully, they’ll be there to stay, in the years to come.