Quo Vadis Nunc, Quora?
I was one of Quora’s earliest users, earned Top Writer status for a few years, and topped the leaderboard as a 9-time Knowledge Prize Winner. One of my answers earned over a million views. Although I stopped contributing to Quora a few years ago, I still care deeply about technology-enabled knowledge sharing. So I am curious to see where Quora is going now.
Quo Vadis, Quora?
I wrote several posts about Quora on The Noisy Channel, where I used to blog. In a 2011 post entitled “Quo Vadis, Quora?” I proposed three use cases for Quora: objective question answering, subjective question answering, and community participation.
I observed that, for most objective questions, I still turned to Google and Wikipedia. While Google sometimes took me to Quora, I couldn’t imagine Quora succeeding through this flow in the long term. Most recently, Google’s launch of AI Overviews has strongly validated my perspective.
On community participation, I was skeptical Quora could succeed as both a question answering site and a social network. I felt that the former would be the easier sell, given the competitive landscape. Again, I feel validated. From what I can tell, Quora has not really thrived as a social community, especially compared to Reddit.
Then as now, I saw subjective question answering as Quora’s strongest suit. A good subjective question can generate a diverse collection of interesting and informed perspectives, as opposed to a single definitive answer. And indeed, Quora managed to attract 400 million monthly active users (MAUs) that, at least in my view, reflect the strength of its subjective answers.
However, Quora has struggled to compete with Reddit not only for traffic (it has over a billion MAUs) but also for ad revenue. Reddit’s emphasis on community participation drives an ad model based on user interests, and it is expected to generate about a billion dollars in 2024. In contrast, Quora has struggled to achieve 5% of that, at least based on published reports.
Pivoting to AI
Recently, Quora pivoted to — or at least heaving leaned into — AI by launching Poe, a platform that aggregates models like OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Anthropic’s Claude in a consumer application and a developer API. Poe does not leverage Quora’s human-generated content (at least not directly), but rather presents itself as a tool for objective question answering.
I asked Poe to compare itself to Quora. It answered as follows:
Using Poe and Quora to answer questions offers different experiences and advantages:
Poe
AI-Driven Responses: Poe uses AI models to generate answers, providing quick and often informative responses.
Personalization: Responses can be tailored based on the context of the conversation.
24/7 Availability: Poe is always available, offering immediate answers without wait times.
Variety of Topics: Can cover a wide range of subjects, though depth may vary depending on the complexity of the question.Quora
Community-Driven: Answers come from a diverse community of users, including experts and enthusiasts.
In-Depth Insights: Responses can provide personal experiences and detailed explanations.
Engagement: Users can ask follow-up questions, comment, and engage in discussions.
Quality Control: The community can upvote or downvote answers, helping surface high-quality content.
Summary
Poe is great for quick, AI-generated information, while Quora excels in community engagement and diverse perspectives. The choice depends on whether you value speed and AI efficiency or in-depth, community-sourced insights.
Fair enough. I’d summarize that as: Poe is using generative AI to target objective question answering, while Quora continues focusing on human-generated subjective question answering.
Will Poe succeed where Quora has stalled?
Is the company right to shift its focus from subjective to objective question answering, or at least reallocate resources in that direction? I am skeptical.
Granted, the emergence of large language models (LLMs) has produced the first credible challenge to Google’s supremacy for objective question answering in years. However, Poe’s million MAUs are a tiny fraction of Quora’s 400 million, itself is a tiny fraction of Google’s billions. The platform may achieve hockey-stick growth, but I am not holding my breath.
Thus, I still think Quora has a bigger opportunity to succeed by doubling down on subjective question answering. Indeed, LLMs may commodify objective question answering to the point that there is a premium on human subjectivity, or at least value in knowing who is standing behind an answer. Subjectivity can be a competitive differentiator.
However, the content has to be valuable, and Quora needs to monetize that value. I believe that, by shifting its focus from infotainment to professional expertise, it could become a much more valuable platform, and less subject to competition from Reddit. As far as I can tell, its main competitor in the professional knowledge sharing space is LinkedIn, and I believe Quora can be a more robust content platform than LinkedIn’s collaborative articles.
So, quo vadis nunc, Quora? Where will Quora go now? Generative AI is certainly having a moment, and I can hardly blame the company for exploring that opportunity. Still, I hope that Quora does not abandon its human-centered roots. As generative AI continues to rise, Quora has the opportunity to provide authentic human perspectives that AI cannot replicate. In a world filled with AI-generated content, Quora could break the mold by providing artisanal, subjective human answers.
