Getting your questions Answered

We all have those quirky questions that pop up in our head once in a while but never get answered. If you're that person, for you there's Quora. 

Quora is a community platform that has gained massive popularity and growth just within a few years of its existence. Launched in 2010, Quora's co-founder and CEO Adam D'Angelo set out on his mission to make the web more interesting by having people tease out information from one another and using technology to curate and filter it. Quora has made a good case that the web was missing out on a valuable knowledge source. By encouraging people to write down their personal experiences, expertise, and advice, the site has compiled some arresting content of the kind that marks the most memorable of face-to-face conversations. Examples range from an astronaut trainer explaining prelaunch rituals to knowing whether monkeys can poop upside down (turns out no).

This is no ordinary Q&A platform where you just ask questions and get answers but you can also get the best reviews. Using Quora you get to select a range of topics of your liking, for example International relations, Business, Food, Fashion, Pop-Culture etc. You can ask questions anonymously if you want and get the suggested experts of those topics to answer your questions.

Quora gives its users "credits" to access certain privileges. It gives you 500 credits to start. If you have questions you need to get answered urgently or by an authentic source you can easily use those credits to ask other people in the "Ask to Answer " option and get prompt answers. And don't worry if you're down on credits. If you go below 100 credits, it will be periodically refreshed back to 100 credits. This means if you have zero credits, you will eventually get 100 credits as back-up. Quora calls this "system refreshes". You can also earn more credits by answering questions. For every upvote that you receive for an answer or post, you will receive 10 credits. This is even true if you wrote the answer anonymously. When someone who you Ask to Answer a question writes an answer, you will receive 5 credits for every upvote that answer receives.

You might wonder how Quora is any different from other Q&A platforms like Yahoo Answers. While other Q&A sites all end up in the state where there's some good information but there's a ton of low-quality answers, Quora can predict which content is good based on signals like which topics you read or follow on the site and answers you voted on and only show you that. 

And we're not done just yet. In early 2013, Quora added blogging as one of its major focuses. Its unending news feed of information is open to all in the community. As a member of this blog service, you can take part in other blogs by sharing, commenting or answering proposed questions. Quora also has an app you can download and have a better user experience, allowing you to waste time a bit more productively.

Pretty neat,huh?

Nazifa Raidah loves books, movies, creeping people out and singing in the shower. She also checks for monsters under her bed before going to sleep every night. Send her a virtual cookie at nazifa45678@gmail.com