Is Quora getting Buzz-Killed?
In the last day or two Quora has inspired a number of complaints from some of its users regarding the large volume of email notifications they’ve received from the service. There may also be an issue for folks who connect to Quora using their Twitter accounts.
I fear these complaints bode poorly for Quora in the long run and that has me wondering if people want a reason not to join.
Let me explain, using Google Buzz as the foundation for my reasoning.
Buzz ‘failed’ because Google fumbled the privacy ball. Even users who weren’t directly affected by the mistake – whose personal information wasn’t inadvertently revealed to violent ex-husbands or to everyone at work – either fled Buzz or disabled it. And yet, when Google made the necessary changes, those people never returned.
Why was that?
Were they so outraged by Google’s egregious, thoughtless planning that they began a boycott of the company’s services? No.
Are people overwhelmed? That’s an answer that makes sense, actually. In fact, it’s a natural response to all the social media activity happening on the Web right now. Still, there are hundreds of millions of users who do what they can to manage a number of accounts and who enjoy the time they can devote to social media.
What about Twitter? Why is it still around? Has there never been a large-scale expression of displeasure with Twitter? I recall some big outages, some problems with spammers and hackers, and once Twitter had to acknowledge an issue tracking followers, but none of these faults made people scrunch up their faces, take their ball and go home.
What makes Twitter different than Buzz or Quora?
There is a distinction, and it’s essential: Twitter is a one-way dialogue, a broadcast* … and that makes it really easy to turn off. In contrast, it’s much harder to walk away from a conversation or discussion, not to mention how scary it can feel to start a conversation with strangers.
I think people feel anxious about taking on a truly social service no matter how good it is.
Am I off-base here? Have I over-stated or over-dramatized the situation again? Will the fuss pass and will Quora be a hit after all?
Please let me know in the comments section.
*attribution/credit to Bryan Foster, who described Twitter this way in a comment he made in response to Linda Lawrey here.
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[...] experiences folks were having with Quora admins. I found their experiences surprising in light of my theory that Quora is not going to appeal to a majority. As I said on Buzz, it doesn’t make sense to me that Quora would want to offend the users [...]
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Quara’s failure will rest solely on it’s admins’ shoulders. Their actions are not only wrong but they way they go about implementing their site’s “policy” is extremely rude.
Censorship is not something most of us approve of. Having your posts edited, moved or even removed with no real explanation….sometimes the same post is edited several times without any real reason. This is a huge strike against Quora. Couple that with their supposed “real name” policy where they suspend your account then email you a request to change your name or contact them. Even if you comply, you will be lucky if the suspension is ever lifted which means they can now edit your posts but you cannot.
These are only two if the several major issues Quora has and I believe that just these two issues are more than enough to spell a big FAIL for Quora
I don’t see an edit option here…forgive the typos …It’s late. Goodnight
Since writing my post I, too, had a couple of strange incidents regarding Quora and its Suggest Edits option. It quickly became clear that even the structure Quora has for its automated notification messages is faulty; because of the formatting, it looked like someone from Quora was essentially telling me I was an idiot. lol
It turned out it was the person who suggested the edits who was being snarky but when I got the email message his comments were IMMEDIATELY followed by the words, “Thanks from the Quora Team”. I had to take a much closer look at the email – and get a little more familiar with the Suggested Edits feature – to figure out what really happened.
I’ve since learned that Quora’s reputation for customer service is already bad, which is frightening considering how young the service is.
Thank you so much, Rainyday Superstar, for being my first commenter. I really appreciate it.