Liz Gannes

Recent Posts by Liz Gannes

Quora: We’re Not Just About Tech and Silicon Valley Anymore (Chart)

Quora today released a breakdown of its users’ answers from the past three months that was designed to prove that the site is no longer just about the inside stories and ruminations about technology start-ups in Silicon Valley.

Rather, of Quora answers with three or more upvotes in the past three months, 24 percent were about business and tech, 23 percent about food and entertainment (should those really be the same category?), 20 percent about politics and social sciences, 20 percent about health and life advice, and 13 percent about other topics.

“Perhaps surprisingly, each of the non-other categories is roughly of the same size!” wrote Quora data analyst Yair Livne.

Livne also reported that:

  • A well-upvoted answer is more likely to be about movies than about start-ups.
  • A new quality answer is about as likely to be about parenting than about Facebook or Apple put together.
  • In the past three months, the two topics drawing the most upvoted answers were movies and food.

Meanwhile, Quora co-founders Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever told Sarah Lacy at PandoDaily that the site’s traffic hit an all-time record last week. How much? They wouldn’t say.

Also, Quora is rumored to be raising money again — a topic VCs like to gossip about all the time, as Lacy points out. But the fact that Quora’s out talking about how it’s not just a tech site makes the rumors more believable.

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Just as the atom bomb was the weapon that was supposed to render war obsolete, the Internet seems like capitalism’s ultimate feat of self-destructive genius, an economic doomsday device rendering it impossible for anyone to ever make a profit off anything again. It’s especially hopeless for those whose work is easily digitized and accessed free of charge.

— Author Tim Kreider on not getting paid for one’s work