Every year in January and February there is a lot of talk in the blogosphere about what the hot trends are going to be on the internet. One site that has come up in a large volume of posts is Quora.

Quora is a large question and answer resource. In fact if you ask it “What is Quora?” the response is as follows:

“Quora is a collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it. The main goal is to be the best possible resourcefor someone who wants to know about each question.”

The primary difference between Quora and other sites out there appears to be the heavy integration with social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter since every question you ask can be pushed out to your friends and followers on these sites. I have had an account on it for a couple of months now but have rarely made use of it.

I can see the appeal of being able to find answers to common questions through crowdsourcing and the fact you can get differing opinions from a wide range of sources but if I have a question the little voice in my head goes “Let’s see what Google has to say about that!” instead of “Let’s go put it on Quora!”.

Until someone can convince myself and others to make that connection I fear that Quora’s place on the internet may reside closer to the dictionary definition of the word it is derived from:

Quorum: a gathering of the minimal number of members of an organization to conduct business

That said I hope that I am wrong and that we have gained a good educational resource. I’ll give it a chance and am now going to ask it for tips as to how I can better engage with it.