Does Quora Have The Secret To Success?

Everyone is talking about it but no one knows anything for sure! How much did they raise from Benchmark? $9 million? $11 million? They are keeping it all a secret. They haven’t shared any numbers, but Harvard graduate Charlie Cheever, the former Facebook employee who left to found Quora with Adam D’Angelo thinks they’re onto something.

Quora is what I would describe as a social wikipedia site, categorized by questions. They use Facebook Connect so your FB friends are automatically your friends in Quora. Facebook Connect is my new favorite way to connect with people on various services these days since it enables you to see which of your friends is using Blippy or Foursquare or the like. Thus, using some Facebook intelligence, Quora scans your profile, notes your interests and implements this information allowing the service to magically know that you are interested in “dogs” or “journalism.” It feels like Facebook for curious people, but as more and more information is consumed on the Internet sparked by questions, Quora has identified a niche that hasn’t been filled to the best of the Net’s ability. Right now it specializes in technology, but they will be branching out to additional topics soon.

Their philosophy is to “keep each person’s world small” and social. Charlie believes that you don’t have to “just be a nerd” to contribute. Their office is currently located in Palo Alto (ironically not far from Facebook headquarters). As far as making money, they aren’t focused on that quite yet. They are more focused on creating a “quality product” although Charlie did mention that the obvious money-maker would be focused advertisements and “that’s definitely a possibility.” After browsing their new service in beta as well as after the launch, I think they’re onto something too.

Jesse Draper, The Valley Girl, @valleygirlshow