News Byte

Q&A Site Formspring Shuts Down

Formspring, the anonymous question-and-answer site launched close to three-and-a-half years ago, is closing its doors, the company announced in a blog post on Friday. While massively popular in the startup’s early days, Formspring failed to continue growing its user base and engagement, despite hosting more than 30 million people on its platform. “While we’ve had great success in reaching a broad audience, it’s been challenging to sustain the resources needed to keep the lights on,” founder and CEO Ade Olonoh wrote. The news was first reported by TechCrunch.

Loose Lips: Yahoo M&A Head Told Employees Company Looking at Two “Significant” and a Half-Dozen Small Buys

In most cases, they sink ships. Here, perhaps not.
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News Byte

Quora Expands Its Smartypants Walled Garden to Include Reviews

Q&A site Quora is opening up another plot in its walled-garden version of the Internet: Reviews. Starting today, the site will allow writers to post written reviews and star ratings of movies, apps and cars and other topics. Previously, it launched a blogging tool in January.

Voices

Facebook’s Uncool (Comic)

Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site.
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Quora Sets Up a Leaky Pay Wall — But for Registrations, Not Money

Quora responds to growing frustration about locking down access to user-generated content.
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Quora Inverts Itself by Offering a Blogging Tool

Not every A needs a Q to get started.
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Voices

Three Reasons to Watch Interest-Based Social Networks in 2013

Brands have some new marketing opportunities as interest-based networks grow and add more mobile features.

Attention Start-Ups: Just Because Facebook Clones Your App, It Doesn’t Mean You’re Dead

Facebook doesn’t Poke its competitors out of the top App Store ranks for long.
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New Leap Commerce App Hoping to “Spark” Conversations About Shopping

Leap Commerce is attempting to build a question-and-answer service, similar to Quora, but for shopping.
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Quora Adds “Online Now” Feature to Drive Faster Answers

Quora today is making its site come a little more alive.
Questions

Charlie Cheever Is Out at Quora