Quora, A Site That Connect People to the World of Knowledge
Quora is a popular Q&A website where users can contribute on sharing knowledge to each other by asking and answering questions. There are a lot of experienced or well-known people that can answer your questions related to their expertises such as Jimmy Wales, Adrian Lamo, Dustin Moskovitz, etc. For example, if you asked a question about working at Google, some Google employees on Quora might answer your question, telling the condition and their experience working at Google. Quora, with the slogan “the best answer to any question” is a social network that is fully suitable for both readers and writers.
Organized News Feed
Quora has an eye-catching news feed that display popular stories on Quora, stories based on the topics and people you followed, and suggested questions you might be able to answer. Users will be comfortable and not boring when scrolling through the news feed since it has a simple and clean user interface with no ads at all.
A Bunch of Various Topics
Quora has a wide range of various topics like Psychology, Programming, Health, Cooking, Politics, and even about a company. You can follow your favourite topics and get the topics’ top stories in your news feed. For quick access to your favourite topic, you can pin them in the left-hand side of your news feed. A topic page has frequently asked questions, top questions, newest questions, top writers, and related topics. To get the latest stories from a topic, you can turn on notification on the topic page. Quora allows users to manage a specific topic like changing the topic’s detail, merging topics, adding alias, adding or removing parent topics and child topics.
Multi-Function Search Bar
Quora’s search bar is used for asking and searching questions. Just type the question you want to ask. Quora will first display the similar questions. If those similar questions don’t refer to yours, then you can ask your question and add details if needed.
Profile Page
In a profile page, you can see biography, asked questions, answers, statistics, highlights, known topics, following, followers, and all activities of a specific person. In your own profile page, you can add profile bio that tells who you are, location, education, employment, and things you know about. Each of them (except profile bio) are served as a topic and can be added a topic bio which is a brief description about the topic. This topic bio will be shown beside your name of your answer if the question is related to the topic.
Ask-to-Answer (A2A)
Your asked question will be published to public after it has been submitted and at the same time it is waiting for answers. To get fast answers, you can use a feature called A2A (Ask-to-Answer). You can request answers from people that are related to or expertise in your question’s topic. However, A2A has a limit for how many people you can ask. So, choose wisely. Note that you can also be asked a question by someone through this A2A. You can answer the question directly, answer it later, or pass it.
Ask & Answer Anonymously
If you don’t want your name displayed on your questions and answers due to privacy, Quora allows you to ask and answer anonymously. Your name will be substituted by the word “Anonymous”.
Answer Wiki
Answer Wiki is a feature on Quora that lets users to write summary of a list of answers for a particular question. This feature aims to give readers an uncontroversial and factual information.
Bookmarked Answers
If you find a long answer of a question and can’t read it right now, you can bookmark the answer to read it later. The bookmark feature is useful for keeping important information or tips so you can view them anytime. You can find the bookmarked answers in the left-hand side of your news feed.
Trending Topics
In Quora, you can also know what topics are trending in the world right now. This keeps you update to the latest news of a specific trending topic. It is located in the left-hand side of your news feed, below the pinned topics.
Blogging Platform
Quora also has a blogging platform which you can create a blog to post your articles or stories. It also allows you to create more than one blog. If people follows your blog, they will get notified if there are new posts on your blog.
Many Types of User Interaction
Quora provides its users many ways to react to what they have found and read. For a question, users can follow, downvote, comment, edit, merge, create an answer wiki, share to other social networks, and embed on a website. For an answer, users can upvote, downvote, thank, bookmark, and suggest edits.
Statistics
Statistics is a feature on Quora that allows users to monitor all activities on their questions, answers, and blog posts for a range of time. This include how many views, upvotes, and shares.
The company (Quora, Inc) was founded by Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever (two Facebook ex-employees) in June 2009 and the website was launched publicly in June 21, 2010.
Quora’s mission is to share and grow the world’s knowledge. We want to democratize access to knowledge of all kinds — from politics to painting, cooking to coding, etymology to experiences — so if someone out there knows something, anyone else can learn it. Quora makes it easy to get your questions answered, share your own knowledge, and browse the most interesting information people across the world want to share.
Adam D’Angelo, the CEO of Quora, stated :
Quora connects you to everything you want to know about. Quora aims to be the easiest place to write new content and share content from the web. We organize people and their interests so you can find, collect and share the information most valuable to you.
Quora is an amazing site to get answers, to share what you know, to read, to think, and make you smarter. Its app is available on Android, iOS, and Windows Phone.
