Quora Q&A
Why would you use Quora over Convore or vice-versa?
I don’t think it’s an either-or. I’d add Namesake into this question too (Namesake has some advantages over Convore, but that’s for another question to answer).
But the two are VERY different, even if on the surface they look similar.
Let’s look at how they are different:
1. Quora is a knowledge repository. Convore is a chat room.
2. Quora’s design and mission affords long text. Convore affords short back and forth snippets of text.
3. Quora forces real names and real identities. Convore starts with your Facebook or Twitter identity, but lets you use a “handle” so it’s hard to figure out real people’s names.
4. Quora creates a feed of your activity (which is why I was fooled into thinking it was a next-generation blogging platform). Convore doesn’t have such a thing and even if it did it wouldn’t make sense because your participation in Convore is back-and-forth chat and one single bit of participation wouldn’t make sense out of context.
5. Quora is keeping a really interesting reputation score (and I theorize a lot more, too) about you. Convore is going to have a tough time doing that because let’s say I left a really great note in the middle of a multi-thousand message chat room. How would Convore know that it was great? There’s no way to signal to the system that it was.
6. Quora rewards great answers, which makes it defacto elitist. Convore lets everyone participate equally, unless you do something so egregious that you get kicked out.
7. Quora, because of its system that votes good answers up and bad answers down, will have a lot less noise. Convore will have the “Chat Room Problem” which is, the masses are asses and when you let them have equal billing you get a ton of noise. Just look at this one thread: https://convore.com/techcrunch/c… See all the noise in there compared to Quora?
8. Quora is better for “day after” conversations where Convore is better for “in the moment” conversations, thanks to its live chat.
9. Quora will have better SEO for your participation there than Convore will give you (because Convore won’t be able to separate out good answers from noise).So, for me it’s not use one over another. I’ll use both side-by-side.
That said, I think Quora has more value long term and I believe advertisers will want to put their messages onto Quora (and will be able to a lot better because of the deep content here) more than they will want to participate in Convore which will look messier and more chaotic (brands tend to avoid those places).
I would use Quora over Convore as Quora affords people time to consider, draft, re-word and then publish their answer.
I can only see this making for richer, more wisely considered and researched responses.
People who contribute well on Quora typically will read and reference other user responses (or part thereof) so you also still have a conversation of sorts.
I think where Convore (capability) will come into its own is when a group of people, perhaps those who are following a question already in Quora, want to discuss individually or a group specific aspects of responses that Quora’s wiki style approach is not ultimately suited for.
In short, I think they would work better together. I also thing Convore are hardly pitching themselves as a Quora competitor and are likely to look remarkably different in even just the next 3 – 4 months as they evolve.
Convore is more complementary than competitive to Quora. On Quora, the answers are meticulous curated while on Convore it’s more spontaneously written. If you take the discussion from Convore to write the Quora answer, you probably come up with a pretty darn good one.
