Quora Turned Into Something Its Cofounders Didn't Expect
It touches on everything from bizarre interview stories to how Steve Jobs would sell a pen.
Five years after its creation, Quora has made a name for itself, but interestingly, one of its founders did not necessarily anticipate that happening.
In light of Quora rolling out its first iPad app, Kurt Wagner at Re/code interviewed Adam D'Angelo, cofounder of Quora, to check in on the site and see how it's doing. D'Angelo shared some thoughts on the new app and plans for monetization (he's thinking of rolling out ads sometime next year), but what was most interesting to us was how Quora evolved from its founder's initial plans.
"When we first started, we thought that Quora was going to be a place where people come when they have a question and where they come when they want to write answers," D'Angelo told Re/code. "It turned out that the most popular thing among the users was not asking questions or writing answers, but just reading answers that were already there."
Quora visitors tend to come to the site to browse the content that is already there as opposed to posing new questions or answers. Sort of like Wikipedia visitors.
"Wikipedia is kind of extreme, where a very, very small group of people contribute pretty much everything," D'Angelo said. "Most people [on Quora] are not contributing. It's a minority of people who contribute, but it's more than people expect."