@rrhoover@justinkan Hey Ryan! We think Quora entering the space pushes forward our thesis that some types of Q&A are better on video vs text. We think the mobile video market will continue to grow and it is an exciting time to be in the space. Congrats to Adam and the Quora team on pushing out their beta product.
Similar to how recent apps have launched with Q&A videos, including Justin Kans Whale. There is definitely low hanging fruit from Quora's 190M users who may find a video response better for their questions.
The beta will initially focus on a small number of topics where videos are an effective way to answer questions, including beauty, cooking, fitness, and parenting.
You can see a write up from @joshconstine on TechCrunch here
If someone from the Quora team is reading this; please concentrate on improving the algorithm to remove opinion based questions from recommended content. Opinion based responses from persons with industry/subject knowledge are a main corner stone in Quora but with every new 10 million users the quality of questions seems to dilute.
When I look back on the questions posted in 2010-2013, they are precise, often more technical and are not designed to gather views but improve the knowledge in the network
Nowadays the content engine regularly suggests me content with questions "Who do you think wears these jeans better, who's your favorite pop artist..."
Measures to improve the content algorithm
1) More strict question validation (keywords, who/like/prefer.. trigger a community guidelines reminder)
2) user education with newcomers (registration date, number of posts)
3) Submitted downvotes should have higher impact on recommended content in the future, now it seems there is very little effect.
Nice move for Quora, !
I can see 2 lil' drawbacks :
- reading english might be actually way easier than understanding someone talking in english, so videos will be reserved to certains topics. It might also reduce answers for those non-speaking-well persons (well, I speak for myself)
- I'm a "in-bed-quora-reader" and my wife wouldn't be so happy to listen to videos while she's trying to sleep
Wow this is a really big move for Quora. I'm hoping that this will make the answers more relative. I usually go to Youtube for tutorials on things I'm interested in. I can't wait to see how this plays out.
I wonder what the quality of the videos will be. Seems to me it lends itself to more quickly-produced cell phone videos over high quality productions.
Interesting nonetheless as I do go to YouTube anytime I ask the question "How do I..."
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