quora

Quora today expanded beyond its question-and-answer roots with the release of a blog product that aims to help both nobodies and somebodies get their words in front of large audiences.

Founded in 2009, Quora has raised $61 million in funding to build what amounts to a more intellectual version of Yahoo Answers. Quora's new blog product aborts its standard Q&A structure to provide users with something more open-ended. Blogs are connected to the regular site experience through topic tags and are accessible inside the company's mobile applications.

There's nothing particularly innovative about Quora's take … Read more

I have a suspicion that Steve Jobs is becoming more missed rather than less.

Those who revered him -- as well as those who disliked him, his brand, and even his Levi's -- realize that tech seems a little less interesting since his departure.

Though he might have appeared overbearing, arrogant, and mercurial -- as well as inspired -- in business, there was always the notion that he was in it (and in life) for something far more interesting than money.

A beautifully told story that appeared in answer to a Quora question serves as a window to that … Read more

Facebook has quietly started phasing out its Questions product, but that doesn't mean it's completely giving up on search.

The social-networking giant is beginning to remove the product for users, a Facebook representative told CNET, but Questions will remain available for Pages and Groups.

Facebook is making the move, the representative said, "to focus on other things." The company didn't elaborate on what those things might be, but it's probably pretty safe to assume that includes search.

Are you a tech startup desperate to hire the best talent around and looking for a central repository of skilled engineers? Or a kick-butt coder trying to get in on the ground floor of a hot new venture? AngelList may have just the place to go.

This evening, AngelList, a service whose alumni companies have raised more than $1.1 billion in funding, launched a new talent portal, a one-stop shop where startups can search for qualified tech talent, and where skilled engineers and others can seek out the best new companies.

"We noticed that people were using AngelList … Read more

Quora continues to rebuff requests to reverse a change to its Web site that publicly discloses what articles its users are reading.

But the question-and-answer site said in a announcement late today that it will make that information visible in fewer places.

The what-users-have-been-reading disclosure will continue to appear on the question, answer, or post page, but not other people's feeds, said Sandra Liu Huang, a Quora product manager.

That move comes after Quora suffered a black eye yesterday after a public complaint from one of its users -- who discovered that his reading habits were far more public … Read more

Most of us would probably do less Web surfing if everyone in the world could see all the items on sex, drugs and nasty diseases that we spend time reading.

Question-and-answer site Quora is adding a new Views feature -- one that's enabled by default -- today that reveals the identity of people who view posts, excepting adult topics and items you're not "following" on the site in some way. So if you follow a person or a subject to an item on "How to get rid of those pesky hemorrhoids," anyone who visits … Read more

After weeks of dodging the press about the gender discrimination lawsuit she filed against her employer, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Ellen Pao says she doesn't plan on quitting the venture capital firm.

This news doesn't come by the way of the press, however. Instead, Pao quietly made the announcement on the Web site Quora, according to TechCrunch, which first reported this news.

Yesterday, a Quora user posted the question, "Did Ellen Pao quit KPCB after the lawsuit?" and under her own account name Pao replied "No, and I don't plan to quit."… Read more

Crowdsourced ask-a-question, get-an-answer site Quora announced a new bookmarking product today called Boards.

In a post on Quora's site, co-founder Adam D'Angelo calls a board created using the new product "a lighter-weight version of a blog," and says Boards lets users "write new posts...repost questions, answers, topics, or anything else that already exists on Quora, and...also post a link to any page from the Web."

Users can create as many boards as they desire--focusing each on a particular topic--and set them up as public or private. (Other Boards users can choose to … Read more

Question-and-answer site Quora has launched a new app for the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

The application, which was made available in Apple's App Store today, offers much of the functionality users find with the Web site version of the service. Users can ask questions, add answers on topics they're well-informed on, and search for questions on more than 60,000 topics, the company said.

To add a bit more functionality to the application, Quora is also utilizing the iPhone's location ability to add a new feature, called "Nearby." That feature lets users view topics on a map, and add questions about (and read answers about) the places or things around them. The Nearby feature also lets users explore other areas around the world to ask questions on topics related to a particular place.

Initial work on Quora began in 2009, and the service was officially launched to the public in June 2010. Since then, the question-and-answer service, which was founded by former Facebook employees Adam D'Angelo and Charlie Cheever, has attracted a loyal following made up of fact-seekers and experts that head to the site each day in the hopes of finding (or providing) the best answers to pressing questions.… Read more