Quora Crowdsourcing

Last week I spent entirely too much time exploring Quora, a crowdsourced Q&A site that seems to be taking off. Quora will never rise to the primacy of Facebook nor Wikipedia. Yet it's a platform that has done enough things right to seduce a lot of pundits, experts, and savvy tech entrepreneurs to be willing to share their expertise with anyone who asks a really good question.

I think that Quora may have legs. It's definitely worth watching and understanding. In my opinion, it's most appropriate for business people and professionals—not so much for consumers.

As an author, consultant, and publisher, I'm interested in the possibility of syndicating and curating selected Quora feeds to be able to add value to you, my audience, by pointing you to answers and resources that I could never come up with on my own.

I'm going to be really interested to watch:

1. How long will people continue to contribute to Quora's knowledgebase?

2. How long will Quora prove useful to a growing number of people?

3. How will Quora monetize itself?

4. Once it goes commercial, will people stop participating?

5. How will the Quora ecosystem evolve as people begin syndicating Quora content?

Why should you care about Quora? It might be the easiest and fastest place to get the answers you need to get something done!

Why Quora Is Useful (and Addictive)
Crowdsourced Q&A Community Builds a Knowledge Repository
By Patricia B. Seybold, CEO and Sr. Analyst, Patricia Seybold Group, February 3, 2011