Quora finds more answers than questions

Where does your journey on the web start? Chances are it often begins at google.com.

But however doggedly Google pursues its mission to organise the world's information, there are among the growing band of website pioneers innovative and increasingly influential companies pushing alternative ways to find what you're looking for.

Type a question into Google these days and - particularly if it's related to the technology business - you're increasingly likely to be served results from Quora.com.

A simple Q&A site with well-executed rating features and social media integration, Quora has become the darling of Silicon Valley's elite and provided easy pickings for quote-hunting technology journalists since it began in January 2010.

This week, the latest bubble-expanding rumours claimed Quora turned down investment funds that valued the firm at US$1 billion ($1.34 billion).

Hot on the heels of Facebook's valuation of US$60 billion, Twitter at US$10 billion and social-games company Zynga at US$9 billion, Quora's perceived value can be taken as another indicator of an inflated and unrealistic internet market.

But it is also incontrovertible evidence that the online Q&A business is on a steep upward curve.

Use your Facebook or Twitter login to join, enter your question and tech insiders and pundits rush to prove their credibility and expertise by providing a knowledgeable - and literate - answer.

Quora was founded by two ex-Facebookers, former engineer Charlie Cheever and chief technology officer Adam D'Angelo - another startup by Facebook alumni who benefit from the cachet of their former employer.

Cheever and D'Angelo used their social media expertise to develop Quora as a more intelligent, sophisticated Q&A site, but also helped generate enough buzz that Silicon Valley heavyweights began contributing.

Entrepreneur Mark Cuban, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and part-time tech entrepreneur Ashton Kutcher have all contributed to Quora.

In response to the question "What does Dustin Moskovitz think of the Facebook movie?", it was Facebook co-founder Moskovitz who replied. "I'm not exactly sure how or why lots of 'big name Valley types' started using the site early on," Cheever wrote on Quora.

"But we did think it was really cool to learn from what they had to share. There is a general culture in Silicon Valley of wanting to try out new things, which probably helped everything get started."

Last month Quora managed to tempt financier Marc Bodnick, co-founder of Bono's private equity firm Elevation Partners, to leave the company and join Quora as its new head of marketing and business operations.

Quora is riding the new wave of anticipation over the next phase of the social internet: taking discovery, and personalised information away from pure search to more intelligent information systems.

Its success can also be attributed to answers that are well optimised and highly visible among search results, but which are also cleverly woven into users' social accounts, sharing answers and inviting exchanges between people we know.

Radio technology executive James Cridland, managing director of Media UK and a regular Quora user, said he was attracted to the site by the calibre of users.

"On Yahoo Answers, you get a well-meaning 13-year-old answering questions, badly, in return for points," he said. "On Quora, it's not unusual for a question about a digital business to be answered by the CEO of that business.

Cridland acknowledges the site's early users will demand innovations to maintain their interest.

"There is also the small thing that it has no visible means of earning any revenue whatsoever. How they crack that will be interesting to watch."

In trying to build revenue streams into the site, Quora faces similar challenges to Twitter in having to devise unobtrusive and sensitive ways for brands to engage with its audience, such as sponsorship of certain topics.

Recruitment is another area with potential, as users already demonstrate their expertise, profile and experience through the answers they contribute.

Stack Overflow, a larger and more serious contender in the Q&A space, is a business focused on making money through recruitment. "Experts are in demand," co-founder Joel Spolsky told the Business Insider website. "Just having that network means there will be ways to help those experts get jobs and help people find experts that can solve their problems."

Spolsky said the site's strategy was to expand only in areas where they can cultivate a core of several hundred experts.

Confirming the popularity of different Q&A sites for different audiences, Yahoo Answers had 48 million monthly US users in January, according to digital marketing analysts comScore, but is filled with chat and questions that include "why are hotdogs called hotdogs and not hotpigs?".

Editorially focused Mahalo had 4.2 million US users, Answerbag had 11.2 million, while flirting teen favourite Formspring.me had 5.4 million.

Israeli site Answers.com is being sold to investment firm AFCV Holdings for US$127 million, a price its shareholders said was too low for an estimated monthly user base of 55 million, according to comScore.

Quora was too small to be picked up by comScore's measurement tools until it started being hyped by the tech community in December 2010, when it had 164,000 US users.

However, by January 2011 it saw that audience drop to 147,000. Each visitor viewed one page on average and spent just two minutes on the site.

To develop, Quora is focusing on algorithms to determine quality - working on encouraging more users to rate content and improving the introduction to the site for new users.

It also plans to expand significantly across new subject areas.

Quora's investors feel the site is developing with the same steady and thoughtful strategy that saw Facebook's exponential growth into the mainstream.

Its combined strategies mean Quora will overlap - and present competition - to curated information sites such as Wikipedia; to the accessible information mission of Google and the social sharing of Facebook.

Investors are falling over themselves to buy a piece of what they think the future of the internet could look like. A worrying sign for the stability of this market is the interest of non-technical investors who want in on the action.

Goldman Sachs had to abort a private placement scheme last month that offered clients a stake in Facebook for a minimum investment of US$2 million; the scheme was so over-subscribed and heavily reported that it risked breaching regulations.

The real test for Quora will come if it survives the impending bursting bubble of the inflated web technology market, which will see the bluff and bluster and unrealistic, over-hyped startups evaporate. Those left behind will require real revenues, real business models and, at last, will show what the future for the social web really looks like.

ANSWER BACK

How the answer sites rate (in monthly US users)

* Yahoo Answers - 48 million

* Answerbag - 11.2 million

* Formspring.me - 5.4 million

* Mahalo - 4.2 million

* Quora - 147,000

- Observer