Jason mKey

Jason is a staff writer for the Social Media category of Justmeans. Along with being a professional freelance blogger and community manager, Jason is also the social media account manager for Sparkplug Digital, an internet marketing firm based out of Seattle WA. He believes in honest community building and using the social web for branding, marketing, public relations and as a forum to bring aware...

Q&A with Web 2.0 Startup Quora

quora If you're even remotely interested in tech, startups, or web 2.0 culture then it's about time to look into Quora. Quora is a grown up formspring.me and it's what LinkedIn answers should be. It's a Q&A platform (you ask a question and get an answer) that takes itself seriously. IT people, longtime entrepreneurs and even some angel investors are taking time to answer your questions. Ask and you shall receive.

Quora was founded in 2009 and went public over this summer. It was started by a guy named Adam D'Angelo (he worked for a small company you might have heard of called Facebook) and is based in the valley. After receiving about 11 million in funding, Quora has taken off.

Quora is simple to use. Log on and follow questions or follow topics. I personally follow startups, social media, web 2.0, social networks, and a couple others. Other topics include Travel, Tech, Science and just about any other heavy topic you can imagine.

Some of my favorite questions:

- How do social sites (examples - Hunch, 4Square) go from 1 to 100k users? What techniques/methods are used to grow early?

-What are some ways to prevent and/or deal with legal issues that arise from actions of users on user generated content websites?

- How do you build a community of users that give high quality comments on a website?

And so forth...

One of the biggest draws to Quora is that some heavy hitters answer questions. Venture capitalist Mark Suster, mega celebrity Ashton Kutcher, SEO genius Rand Fishkin, Engage author Brian Solis, and FAIL blog creator Ben Huh are just a few of the noteworthy people answering questions.

The natural question to be asked is if Quora is worth your time. It's a full on social network with the ability to follow others and make "friends", but the real benefit comes from the questions and answers. It's a system of you help me and I help you. Those who answer tend to be generous and often leave long and detailed responses. There is such a thing as a stupid question and many go unanswered. Those who do answer have an opportunity to show off their expertise and experience in a particular topic.

Quora faces competition from established sites such as Yahoo answers, Ask.com, and answers.com. Facebook Questions and a forthcoming Google questions platform will without a doubt soon become major competitors. The big question is if users will care about question and answer social networks in the long term. The short term answer is an astounding yes, but as more web 2.0 Q&A platforms emerge it'll be worthwhile to see who (if anyone) emerges as a dominant force in this growing segment.

Let's be friend on Quora. I'm Jason mKey and I'll answer your questions.

Tags: Social Networking