Quora Q&As come to iPhone, iPod Touch
The free question-and-answer app lets users ask questions and add and read answers, as the Quora Web site does. But it also uses location features to allow for targeted questions and answers relevant to the locales a user is near.
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.
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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.
Venture-capital firms are also seeing value in Quora. Last year, the company raised a reported $11 million in a round of funding led by Benchmark Capital. That round was based on a valuation of $86 million. Perhaps most impressive, the company reportedly closed the round in March of last year--a few months before its service was even made available to the general public.
Quora's iPhone app is available for free in Apple's App Store. The company said in a statement today that going forward, it plans to continue "supporting and developing the app."