Q*K
发帖数: 3464 | 1 by Kevin on February 9, 2011
Since launch, I’ve been going back and forth on Quora and it’s value to
marketers and the general public. The reality is, Quora is not a new
concept. The idea of anyone being able to answer questions online has been
around for years. Quora is certainly more elegant than its predecessors,
but it comes with the same frustrations.
TechCrunch and many other industry blogs have been discussing Quora for
months and there’s even been a backlash… and a backlash to the backlashin
regard to the criticism of Quora. The fact is, traffic to Quora is
minuscule as TechCrunch has pointed out (as of January 23 it was 150,000
uniques a month). Based on the buzz, it’s hard not to deem Quora “the
next shiny object.” Of course, don’t let someone else’s opinion get in
the way of your own experience.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve ramped up my investigation into Quora and
have found little redeeming qualities that provide the bang for the buck I
would be looking for to develop my personal brand. Sure, there is some
highly valuable information available and some very bright minds are adding
value on a daily basis, but finding the “gems” in the already growing
mountain of clutter is challenging. Here are some of the core issues I am
having and I welcome any tips or info on what I could be doing better.
* Answers are often long and result in eye fatigue after reading just a
few questions. Is it really necessary to write a blog post as an answer?
Or are the questions just so vague that a 600 word response is required?
* Easily curating the experience to focus only on people is a challenge.
It would be great to separate individuals from topics.
* Speaking of topics… I only subscribe to 5 topics and already I’m
overwhelmed. It’s a significant time investment to truly be engaged.
* Where is the conversation and communication? Robert Scoble has called
Quora a “great community and way for people to communicate about what’s
interesting in their lives in a new way”. What am I missing?
At this point, I find it hard to believe that Quora has the staying power
needed to become a mainstream resource. I assume people said the same thing
about Wikipedia and I know they said the same thing about Twitter, but the
time investment needed to engage on Quora is significant and the subject
matter is so broad. It’s possible that Quora could take the same approach
as Wikipedia and growth through the passion of a small core set of users,
but it seems unrealistic based on the current structure. It’s too much of
an individual experience.
While I believe that the Q&A Model is something that has significant value
in a marketing strategy, I’m prone to believe that a qualified experience
focused on the brand or industry is more valuable than trying to hitch your
wagon to Quora. An open API may significantly increase the value of Quora (
as it did for Twitter) but we’ll have to wait until that happens before we
can understand the impact. Is Quora the big thing in 2011? Maybe in buzz
only, but one never knows.
For now, I’ll keep watching and do my best to participate, because the only
way to truly understand any experience is to be a part of it. That doesn’
t mean trying it once and then giving up. Value is not a single experience
practice in my book, but unfortunately it is for many. What have you
learned? Have you given Quora a fair shot? What did you give up on because
it was the “shiny new object” only to have it turn into the “IT” place
to be? |
|
