Quora is an up-and-coming social question site. It seems like a mashup of Twitter and Yahoo questions. Depending on the channel you subscribe to, Quora can be an advice search engine.
How Quora works
Think about how you search for something on Google. Do you normally ask a question or part of a question? Most people do. This makes Quora a great tool for finding information. It is also a great platform for businesses to get some traffic to their sites by answering questions.
Following
There are feeds to follow like Twitter. They are grouped together like channels on other social sites. Quora calls the channels on their site “Topics”. An example Topic would be Social Media or Small Business. When you follow this Topic, you will see all of the questions asked and the updates with answers.
If there is a question getting a lot of great answers, you can choose to follow a single question.
Rating
You can rate the answer like Reddit by clicking the arrow button either up or down depending on how relevant the reply is. This works well for sites that use it because it generally moves the most relevant answers to the top of the list. Having the most relevant or popular answers at the top means you will spend less time searching for the information you want.
Sharing
If you link your Facebook account, your Twitter account or your blog, you can share questions and answers you find.
Bio
The bio page is like many others out there. You have a limited amount of space to talk about yourself. There is not a place for your URL, but you can link your Quora account to Twitter, Facebook and your Tumblr or WordPress blog.
Auto Complete
When you start searching for a question, Quora will start to search all the previously asked questions by the keywords you are using. As you type, you will start to see a list of possible questions you may be asking. If you see something close to what you want, you can click on it.
Conclusion
The overall feel of Quora is most like Reddit, but prettied up. I think this could be a great platform to show off your knowledge in a helpful way. Quora is much more public than an industry specific forum, so as the popularity grows, I think you will see more of the answers in Google search results. This should help get you known in your industry or niche. What are your thoughts on Quora or other up and coming social media sites?
