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| url = {{URL|www.quora.com}}
| url = {{URL|www.quora.com}}
| programming language = [[Python (programming language)|Python]], [[C++]]<ref name="services">{{cite web|url=https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Quora-choose-C-over-C-for-its-high-performance-services|title=Why did Quora choose C++ over C for its high performance services? - Quora|accessdate=February 12, 2011|publisher=Quora}}</ref>
| programming language = [[Python (programming language)|Python]], [[C++]]<ref name="services">{{cite web|url=https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Quora-choose-C-over-C-for-its-high-performance-services|title=Why did Quora choose C++ over C for its high performance services? - Quora|accessdate=February 12, 2011|publisher=Quora}}</ref>
| alexa = {{decrease}} 129 (Global) ({{as of|2017|12|31|alt=December 2017}})<ref name="alexa">{{cite web|url= http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/quora.com|title= Quora.com Site Info | publisher= [[Alexa Internet]]}}</ref>
| alexa = {{decrease}} 134 (Global) ({{as of|2018|01|24|alt=January 2018}})<ref name="alexa">{{cite web|url= http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/quora.com|title= Quora.com Site Info | publisher= [[Alexa Internet]]}}</ref>
| registration = Optional/required, can write and ask anonymously
| registration = Optional/required, can write and ask anonymously
| language = [[English language|English]], [[French language|French]], [[German language|German]], [[Japanese language|Japanese]], [[Spanish language|Spanish]], [[Italian language|Italian]]
| language = [[English language|English]], [[French language|French]], [[German language|German]], [[Japanese language|Japanese]], [[Spanish language|Spanish]], [[Italian language|Italian]]

Revision as of 16:16, 24 January 2018

For the legislature term, see Quorum.

Quora, Inc.
Screenshot
Kelly Battles (CFO)[1]
URLwww.quora.com
RegistrationOptional/required, can write and ask anonymously
LaunchedJune 21, 2010; 13 years ago (2010-06-21)
Current statusActive

Quora is a

question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited, and organized by its community of users. Its publisher, Quora Inc., is based in Mountain View, California. The company was founded in June, 2009, and the website was made available to the public on June 21, 2010.[4] Users can collaborate by editing questions and suggesting edits to answers that have been submitted by other users.[5]

History

Quora was co-founded by Adam D'Angelo and Charlie Cheever, both former Facebook employees. It is a website where people can find answers to questions and explore complex topics in depth.

Quora's user base has grown quickly since 2010.[6] In April 2017, Quora claimed to have 190 million monthly unique visitors, up from 100 million a year earlier.[7]

In June, 2011, Quora redesigned its website to improve website navigation and usability.[8] Quora made an official iPhone app on September 29, 2011, followed by an Android app on September 5, 2012.

Google Search popularity of Quora over 5 years

In September, 2012, Quora announced that co-founder Charlie Cheever would leave his position as a co-operator of the company, though he would continue in an advisory role.[9]

In January, 2013, Quora launched a blogging platform, allowing users to post non-answer content on their profiles.[10]

Quora launched a full-text search of questions and answers on its website on March 20, 2013,[11] and extended the feature to mobile devices in late May, 2013.[12] It also announced in May, 2013, that all its usage metrics had tripled relative to the same time in the prior year.[13] In November, 2013, Quora introduced a feature called Stats to allow all Quora users to see summary and detailed statistics regarding how many people had viewed, upvoted, and shared their questions and answers.[14][15] TechCrunch reported that, although Quora had no immediate plans for monetization, they believed that search ads would likely be their eventual source of revenue.[16]

In April, 2014, it was announced that Quora was raising $80 million from

Y Combinator batch.[21][22][23]

Quora acquired

Parlio online community website in March, 2016.[24] In April of that year, the company also began a limited rollout of advertising on the site.[25]

In October, 2016, Quora launched a Spanish version of its website to the public.[26] Following this announcement, in early 2017, a beta version of Quora in French was announced.[27] In May, 2017, the launch of beta versions in German and Italian launched.[28] In September, 2017, a beta version in Japanese was launched.[29]

In April, 2017, Quora was reported to have received Series D funding with a valuation of $1.8 billion.[30]

Operation

Quora requires users to register with their

Adrián Lamo.[33][34][35][36]

Quora has developed its own proprietary algorithm to rank answers, which works similarly to Google PageRank.[37] Quora uses Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud technology to host the servers that run its website.[38][39]

Currently, Quora has different ways to recommend questions to users:[40]

  • Home feed questions recommendations: In this method, each user will have a timeline that is personalized to their preferences. Quora also provides "interesting" questions that are relevant to the user's preferences. This will lead to the user either answering that question or refers another user to better answer it.
  • Daily Digest: In this method, Quora sends a daily email containing a set of questions with one answer that is deemed the best answer given certain ranking requirements.
  • Related Questions: In this method, whether the user is logged in or not, a set of questions that relates to the current questions will be recommended and displayed on the side. This will help the user navigate through the questions and find what is more relevant to their preference.
  • Ask to Answer: This feature enables the user to request another user's answer to a question that they feel is fit or better suited to answer that question.

Reception

Quora was reviewed extensively by the media in 2010.[41][42][43]

According to Robert Scoble, Quora succeeded in combining attributes of Twitter and Facebook.[44] Later, in 2011, Scoble criticized Quora for being a "horrid service for blogging" and, although a decent question and answer website, not substantially better than competitors.[45]

As of August 2017, according to Alexa, the largest user base of Quora, 36.9%, is in the United States, followed by India at 19.3%.[46]

Content moderation

Quora supports various features to moderate content posted by users. The majority of content moderation is done by the users, though staff can also intervene.

  • Upvote/Downvote – Users can rank answers based on how relevant or helpful they found the answers to be. This feature helps maintain the quality of content posted online.[47] The more upvotes an answer receives, the higher it is ranked, and it shows up on top of the searches related to the question.
  • Report Answer – Users can report plagiarism, harassment, spam, factually incorrect articles, etc. This keeps sub-standard content under check.
  • Suggest Edits – Users make suggestions to improve an article by proposing changes to it. The proposed changes are also made visible to the original author of the question or answer and can be either approved and published or rejected.

Anonymity concerns

Quora allows users to create user profiles with visible real names, photos, site use statistics etc., which users can set to private. In August 2012, blogger Ivan Kirigin pointed out that acquaintances and followers could see his activity, including which questions he had looked at.

search engines. Users can disable this feature.[49]

In 2014, a controversy arose about Quora's policy to restrict the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine from crawling their site. Citing possible user remorse over previously posted content, the Wayback Machine was banned entirely from crawling Quora.[50] Since the beginning of the

Russian military intervention in Ukraine, Quora has used by the Kremlin-controlled troll army
to slander and harass users of Ukrainian nationality, often anonymously.

Posterity

Quora has attracted controversy for using robots.txt to forbid the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine from crawling the site.[51] Their stated reason is that the Wayback APIs as of 2016 does not give users a way to censor answers that they may regret previously posting. Critics have raised concerns about the fate of Quora's data if the site ever goes offline and recommended Stack Overflow as an easily archived alternative.[52]

Top Writers Program

In November 2012, Quora introduced the Top Writers Program as a way to recognize individuals who had made especially valuable content contributions to the site and encourage them to continue. This has inspired both young and experienced writers. Top writers are invited to occasional events and receive gifts such as branded clothing items and books. The company believes that, by cultivating a group of core users who are particularly invested in the site, the program creates a

feedback loop of user engagement.[53]

Competitors

Timeline

Date Event type Details
June 2009 Product Quora founded
March 2010 Funding Quora raises $11 million in a series A, with
Benchmark Capital as an investor[55]
June 2010 Product Quora announces that it will open up to the public[56]
January 2011 Team Marc Bodnick leaves Elevation Partners to join Quora[57]
February 2011 Technology Quora chooses C++ over C for its high performance services[58]
July 2011 Product Quora introduces video to its Q&A pages[59]
July 2011 Product Quora introduces Credits for asking-to-answer questions[60]
September 2011 Product Quora introduces threaded comments and comment voting[61]
May 2012 Funding Quora raises $50 million in a series B, with Peter Thiel and Adam D'Angelo as investors[55]
September 2012 Team Co-founder Charlie Cheever leaves[62]
November 2012 Product Quora introduces Top Writers program[63]
January 2013 Product Quora introduces blogs[10]
March 2013 Product Quora introduces a policy eliminating image-only answers.[64]
April 2014 Funding Quora raises $80 million in a series C at a $900 million valuation, with
Y Combinator as investors[55][65]
January 2016 Product Quora announces bounty system, offering financial bounties for the best answer (selected by the question asker) on select questions.[66]
March 2016 Product Quora acquires
Parlio, an online Q&A site started by Wael Ghonim.[67]
April 2016 Product Quora announces that it will start out testing advertisements, on a small number of question pages.[68]
May 2016 Team Marc Bodnick, Quora's public face and leader of its business and moderation team, announces that he is leaving the company.
August 2016 Product Quora announces support for the Spanish language.[69]
November 2016 Team
Kelly Battles announced as new chief financial officer (CFO).[1][70]
April 2017 Funding Quora raises $85 million in a series D at $1.8 billion valuation, with
Y Combinator as investors[71]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Joining Quora as CFO - Kelly Battles' Posts - Quora". kellybattles.quora.com. Retrieved February 25, 2017.
  2. ^ "Why did Quora choose C++ over C for its high performance services? - Quora". Quora. Retrieved February 12, 2011.
  3. ^ "Quora.com Site Info". Alexa Internet.
  4. ^ "Quora's Highly Praised Q&A Service Launches To The Public (And The Real Test Begins)". Techcrunch.com. June 21, 2010. Retrieved April 6, 2013.
  5. ^ Wortham, Jenna (March 12, 2010). "Facebook Helps Social Start-Ups Gain Users". New York Times. Retrieved March 29, 2010.
  6. ^ Lewenstein, ed. (November 28, 2010). "Quora Signups Explode". Retrieved January 24, 2011.
  7. ^ "How many people use Quora?"."Q&A app Quora valued around $1.8 billion in $85 million fundraise".
  8. ^ Tsotsis, Alexia (June 24, 2011). "Inspired by Wikipedia, Quora aims for relevancy with topic groups and reorganized topic pages". techcrunch.com. Retrieved April 6, 2013.
  9. ^ Cutler, Kim-Mai (September 11, 2012). "Quora Co-Founder Charlie Cheever Steps Back From Day-To-Day Role At The Company". TechCrunch.
  10. ^ a b Constine, Josh (January 23, 2013). "Quora Launches Blogging Platform With Mobile Text Editor To Give Every Author A Built-In Audience". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 1, 2013. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  11. ^ Russell, Jon (March 21, 2013). "Quora finally introduces full-text search to boost content discovery". The Next Web. Retrieved November 14, 2013. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  12. ^ Constine, Josh (May 29, 2013). "Quora Brings Full-Text Search To Mobile To Unlock FAQ&As For Any Keyword". TechCrunch. Retrieved November 14, 2013. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  13. ^ Tsotsis, Alexia (May 28, 2013). "Quora Grew More Than 3X Across All Metrics In The Past Year". Retrieved November 14, 2013.
  14. AllThingsD. Retrieved November 14, 2013. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help
    )
  15. Fast Company. Retrieved November 14, 2013. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help
    )
  16. ^ Constine, Josh (November 13, 2013). "Quora Signals It's Favoring Search Ads For Eventual Monetization, Launches Author Stats Tool". TechCrunch. Retrieved November 14, 2013.
  17. ^ Constine, Josh (April 9, 2014). "Quora Wants To Stay Independent, Raises $80M Series C From Tiger Global At ~$900M Valuation". TechCrunch. Retrieved May 11, 2014. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  18. ^ Konrad, Alex (May 9, 2014). "Quora Raises $80 Million From Tiger Global To 'Stay Independent Forever'". Forbes. Retrieved May 11, 2014. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  19. ^ McBride, Sarah (April 9, 2014). "Tiger Global helps Q&A site Quora raise $80 million". Reuters. Retrieved May 11, 2014. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  20. ^ "Quora Raises $80M Led by Tiger Global, Now Valued at $900Ml". Re/code. April 9, 2014. Retrieved April 11, 2014.
  21. ^ Constine, Josh (May 11, 2014). "Q: Why Did Quora Join Y Combinator? A: It Was Almost Free". TechCrunch. Retrieved May 11, 2014. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  22. Y Combinator
    . Retrieved May 12, 2014.
  23. ^ Kokalitcheva, Kia (May 9, 2014). "Meet the oldest Y Combinator startup ever: Quora". VentureBeat. Retrieved May 12, 2014.
  24. ^ "Quora's first acquisition is Arab Spring instigator's Q&A site Parlio". TechCrunch. March 30, 2016. Retrieved March 31, 2016.
  25. ^ "Quora begins testing ads on 'small number' of question pages". VentureBeat. Retrieved August 7, 2016.
  26. ^ "Quora en español launches out of beta". VentureBeat. Retrieved October 21, 2016.
  27. ^ "Launching a beta for Quora en français". blog.quora.com. February 27, 2017.
  28. ^ "Launching betas for Quora in Italiano & Quora a... - The Quora Blog - Quora". blog.quora.com.
  29. ^ "Launching a beta for Japanese - The Quora Blog - Quora". blog.quora.com.
  30. ^ "Q&A app Quora valued around $1.8 billion in $85 million fundraise".
  31. ^ "Quora Terms of Service". Retrieved February 15, 2017.
  32. ^ Mlot, Stephanie (February 15, 2013). "Quora adds options for sharing with unregistered users". PC Mag. Retrieved July 31, 2016.
  33. ^ Arthur, Charles; Kiss, Jemima (January 5, 2011). "Quora: the hottest question-and-answer website you've probably never heard of". The Guardian. London. Retrieved May 31, 2012.
  34. ^ "Quora morphs from adolescence to hot property". linkedmediagroup.com. Retrieved April 6, 2013.
  35. ^ Dishman, Lydia (January 4, 2011). "fastcompany.com". fastcompany.com. Retrieved April 6, 2013.
  36. ^ Taber, Jane (October 19, 2011). "Quora offers clues as to why Justin Trudeau won't yet seek Liberal helm — The Globe and Mail". The Globe and Mail. Toronto.
  37. ^ "Quora's New Algorithm for Ranking Answers". ReadWriteWeb. Archived from the original on February 7, 2011. Retrieved March 29, 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  38. ^ "Quora Signups". ReadWriteWeb. Retrieved March 29, 2010.
  39. ^ Lohr, Steve (April 22, 2011). "Amazon Malfunction Raises Doubts About Cloud Computing". The New York Times.
  40. ISBN 9781450340359
    .
  41. ^ "V.C.'s Answer Yes to Quora". Nytimes.com. March 30, 2010. Retrieved March 29, 2010.
  42. ^ Baig, Edward C. "Social-networking site Quora has answers to your questions". USA Today. Retrieved March 29, 2010.
  43. ^ Yiannopoulos, Milo. "Quora will be bigger than Twitter". London: Telegraph. Retrieved March 29, 2010.
  44. ^ "Is Quora the biggest blogging innovation in 10 years". Scobleizer. Archived from the original on December 27, 2010. Retrieved March 29, 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  45. ^ "Why I was wrong about Quora as a blogging service..." Scobleizer. January 30, 2011. Retrieved August 9, 2011.
  46. ^ "Quora.com Traffic, Demographics and Competitors - Alexa". www.alexa.com.
  47. ^ "The How-To Guide to Quora | Quora Features | Que". www.quepublishing.com. Retrieved March 29, 2017.
  48. ^ "This is a bit fucked, Quora". Giantrobotlasers.com. August 13, 2012. Retrieved April 6, 2013.
  49. ^ "Quora Privacy Policy". Retrieved April 7, 2014.
  50. ^ Mill, Eric. "Quora Keeps the World's Knowledge For Itself". konklone.com. Retrieved January 9, 2018.
  51. ^ McCarthy, Andrew (June 1, 2016). "How should I retrieve a deleted answer from a Quora user?". Quora. Retrieved July 31, 2016.
  52. ^ Mill, Eric (October 15, 2014). "Quora keeps the world's knowledge for itself". Retrieved July 31, 2016.
  53. ^ Bea, Francis (October 30, 2012). "Quora Introduces Top Writers, Drives Attention – and rewards – to its Most Influential Users". Digital Trends.
  54. ^ "Quora". Crunchbase. Retrieved November 28, 2017.
  55. ^ a b c "Quora". Https:. Retrieved July 1, 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
  56. ^ "Q&A search site Quora opens to the public". CNET. Retrieved July 1, 2015.
  57. ^ "Meet Quora's New Grown-Up: Elevation Partners' Marc Bodnick". Business Insider. Retrieved July 1, 2015.
  58. ^ "Why did Quora choose C++ over C for its high performance services? - Quora". Quora.com. Retrieved February 12, 2011.
  59. ^ "Quora Adds Video To Its Q&A Pages". Techcrunch.com. Retrieved July 1, 2015.
  60. ^ "Quora Testing User Credits For "Ask To Answer" Questions". Techcrunch.com. Retrieved July 1, 2015.
  61. ^ "Quora Gets Threaded Comments, Comment Voting, Editing And Images". Techcrunch.com. Retrieved July 1, 2015.
  62. ^ Yung-Hui, Lim (September 12, 2012). "Co-Founder Charlie Cheever Leaves And Quora Is Curve Jumping". Forbes. Retrieved July 1, 2015.
  63. ^ "Quora Introduces A New Top Writers Program As A Hat Tip To Its Most Valuable Contributors". Fastcompany.com. Retrieved July 1, 2015.
  64. ^ "What is your favorite Quora policy or new feature? What Quora feature(s) should be improved or eliminated? - Quora". Https:. Retrieved October 10, 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
  65. ^ "Quora Wants To Stay Independent, Raises $80M Series C From Tiger Global At ~$900M Valuation". Techcrunch.com. Retrieved July 1, 2015.
  66. ^ "Quora Turns 80M Visitors Into Q&A Bounty Hunters With Knowledge Prizes". Techcrunch.com. Retrieved April 27, 2016.
  67. ^ "Quora's first acquisition is Arab Spring instigator's Q&A site Parlio". Techcrunch.com. Retrieved April 27, 2016.
  68. ^ "Quora begins testing ads on 'small number' of question pages". Venturebeat.com. Retrieved April 27, 2016.
  69. ^ "Expanding Quora Beyond English Into Spanish". Retrieved August 2, 2016.
  70. ^ "Foundation trustee to join Quora as finance officer". The Signpost. November 26, 2016.
  71. ^ "Quora scores $85M funding as valuation doubles to $1.8B". Bizjournals.com. Retrieved May 5, 2017.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Quora.
Wikidata has the property:
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Quora&oldid=822135264"