Got a question?

Well have got a question, ? A technical one lets say.Where do you go for help? Logically speaking you might ask your friends or people around you to fix the problem. Not solved it yet? Okay, in comes the Web. There is a new site just to help you- Quora . 


Time for a short history lesson.Quora was founded in 2009 but was in private beta stage until June 1 2010 when it was opened for the public. Still you need an invite to experience this new platform.

Basically Quora is a Q&A site - you ask a question and another user replies to the question. We have had sites like these before - Ask , Yahoo Answers et al. But what sets Quora apart from its predecessors is that the users are asked to answer in full detail such that the question is answered to the point and clarifies all majority of the doubt. Moreover the platform is more social. You get  to follow other users,questions and vote the answers if you feel they are good. You also get to share a question on other popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter and solve the question posed. The questions asked are all answered in real time so it is more like a twitter feed but with Q&A. The questions too can be categorized by the community.This is where a lot of spam is going to be truncated. Quora also asks users their favourite topics about which they are interested to answer questions.


What Quora is doing is that it is creating a database of all the problems that users face. In future if any person faces a similar problem or doubt then all he needs to do is to head to Quora. Maybe the aim of creating a invite-only system is to reduce the spam and increase the content to sizeable level such that once it opens to the public completely then Quora can be viewed as an alternative to Wikipedia itself. At this point ,thinking into the future it is a possibility that Quora is the next Wikipedia. Right Now Wikipedia has content which is very formal and can be used maybe to read history or way a company functions but it doesn't give the way a product of the company works. People who are right now contributing at Quora are of (high) reputation ranging from a Yahoo engineer to a tech blogger-everyone extending their helping hand to answer a question.

Now coming to the actual website itself. On the top there is a bar to navigate between home,your profile, settings or logout. The main layout is split into 2 columns. Tthe left wider column which is filled with questions with the users favorite topics. Notifications if any appear on the left column. The right column which is a comparatively narrow can be used to toggle between your favorite topics,questions you follow or new uncategorized questions (for which you can categorize) and also you see the activity from people you follow.

The website is simple to look ,work and admire. Quora might not be the right place to look for solved questions right away but we can comfortably say in around 6 months the database might be ready to satisfy the needs of certain part of the audience who need help. 
As noted above,Quora right now is invite-only. Luckily, we do have invites to give away ,if anyone is interested please leave a note in the comment section.

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