I've never been a big fan of Quora, or the hype surrounding Quora in spite of very close friends being huge fans of it. And I've never been able to pin point the reason for the success of Quora as well- especially in India, given that most questions asked on Quora would have answers provided on wikipedia or on some similar source which is more or less accurate, and in any case more reliable than posts on Quora. Let's try and pin point.
Explanations provided on Wikipedia and/other technical sources tend to be too technical, and catered towards the academic- while people googling things out tend to not be academics (I hope). Thus, the target audience here from Quora's point of view is the average person, who wants to either prepare for exams, enhance knowledge for work related requirements, or is curious is general about scientific concepts (happens a lot in Asian countries especially- higher penetration in India has to do partly with our comfort with English).
Sites like Investopedia tend to give simpler explanations, but still maintain a certain amount of professionalism while giving examples and would not cite cricketers or bollywood actors or other things which Indians relate to (or other similar things that we can easily relate to as a global citizen as well). We love pictures, examples and simple explanations which may not be 100% accurate but are easy to grasp and provide us maybe 80-90% of the picture. These explanations generally have more value to the public as a whole who may not 1)have the technical knowledge to understand complete definitions and 2)may not have the patience to understand the whole thing
Let us look at the people who might be capable of providing answers to a technical question. (I pause here to note that not all questions on Quora are technical questions, but the success of Quora I believe is because of scientific questions like say 'Why do we have day and night' answered in very simple terms but without sacrificing too much on completeness. )We have the academic who answered the same question in a journal which was in turn quoted on Wikipedia who would answer it in a complete fashion, with a technical explanation and maybe an obscure example. Suppose we take the function of financial markets as a question and the journal would have explanations about moving money across time and states of nature and will provide a few examples with notations that may be a bit alien to the average reader. Now, an ex-VP of an investment bank would give a much simpler explanation than the academic because he has grasped the essense of the question much better than the academic, has seen real world applications or examples, and also knows better - how to capture the imagination of the listener while answering a question.He would talk about a student who hit a lottery who wants to move his money ahead in time since he cant consume it all at once, or a poor farmer who wants to hedge and move money across states of nature (I'm not really trying to be too creative here- the VP would obviously have better definitions).
Now what exactly do we want simple answers?- this is particularly relevant to Indians, but applicable across the world as well. People are lazy (in spite of having enough time on their hands, are unwilling to invest it in learning terminoogy or concepts), have too little time to spend on understanding answers (might be a senior professional not well versed in technical terminology) and in general, value answers with a practical outlook (as humans, we often understand better with illustrations, examples etc). Also, time is a limited resource and lesser time spent on understanding a concept is a kind of value addition a well. Thus, the time that a person spends in answering a single question- putting his practical knowledge and spending his time into the answer, can save the time of millions of others and help them relate the answer to day to day things that they experience. The success of Quora is in getting the people who answer recognition within the website and thus give them an incentive to write great answers. Asking questions isn't easy either and such people (who ask crisp, practically relevant questions) are also appreciated by the community and Quora facilitates this.
Philosophical questions are also a big draw that Quora has to offer- perhaps I'll write about it some other time when I have a clearer idea about the success of that part.
Explanations provided on Wikipedia and/other technical sources tend to be too technical, and catered towards the academic- while people googling things out tend to not be academics (I hope). Thus, the target audience here from Quora's point of view is the average person, who wants to either prepare for exams, enhance knowledge for work related requirements, or is curious is general about scientific concepts (happens a lot in Asian countries especially- higher penetration in India has to do partly with our comfort with English).
Sites like Investopedia tend to give simpler explanations, but still maintain a certain amount of professionalism while giving examples and would not cite cricketers or bollywood actors or other things which Indians relate to (or other similar things that we can easily relate to as a global citizen as well). We love pictures, examples and simple explanations which may not be 100% accurate but are easy to grasp and provide us maybe 80-90% of the picture. These explanations generally have more value to the public as a whole who may not 1)have the technical knowledge to understand complete definitions and 2)may not have the patience to understand the whole thing
Let us look at the people who might be capable of providing answers to a technical question. (I pause here to note that not all questions on Quora are technical questions, but the success of Quora I believe is because of scientific questions like say 'Why do we have day and night' answered in very simple terms but without sacrificing too much on completeness. )We have the academic who answered the same question in a journal which was in turn quoted on Wikipedia who would answer it in a complete fashion, with a technical explanation and maybe an obscure example. Suppose we take the function of financial markets as a question and the journal would have explanations about moving money across time and states of nature and will provide a few examples with notations that may be a bit alien to the average reader. Now, an ex-VP of an investment bank would give a much simpler explanation than the academic because he has grasped the essense of the question much better than the academic, has seen real world applications or examples, and also knows better - how to capture the imagination of the listener while answering a question.He would talk about a student who hit a lottery who wants to move his money ahead in time since he cant consume it all at once, or a poor farmer who wants to hedge and move money across states of nature (I'm not really trying to be too creative here- the VP would obviously have better definitions).
Now what exactly do we want simple answers?- this is particularly relevant to Indians, but applicable across the world as well. People are lazy (in spite of having enough time on their hands, are unwilling to invest it in learning terminoogy or concepts), have too little time to spend on understanding answers (might be a senior professional not well versed in technical terminology) and in general, value answers with a practical outlook (as humans, we often understand better with illustrations, examples etc). Also, time is a limited resource and lesser time spent on understanding a concept is a kind of value addition a well. Thus, the time that a person spends in answering a single question- putting his practical knowledge and spending his time into the answer, can save the time of millions of others and help them relate the answer to day to day things that they experience. The success of Quora is in getting the people who answer recognition within the website and thus give them an incentive to write great answers. Asking questions isn't easy either and such people (who ask crisp, practically relevant questions) are also appreciated by the community and Quora facilitates this.
Philosophical questions are also a big draw that Quora has to offer- perhaps I'll write about it some other time when I have a clearer idea about the success of that part.
No comments:
Post a Comment