← Quora archive  ·  2011 Dec 22, 2011 08:25 PM PST

Question

Has Quora lost its way?

Answer

I sent my reactions to one of the Quora team members privately.

In it, I noted "lost its way" as one of the two possibilities, the less likely one. The more likely possibility is that Quora is at a go-big-or-go-home fork in the road. It is unfortunately a consequence of being a venture-funded startup, driven by specific growth expectations, that sometimes these moves must be made, even if it means giving up the original successful positioning and losing a loyal early user group in the process.

If the move results in the Q&A core being drowned out as I (like many other respondents here) see as a likely outcome, I'll probably taper off my usage of the site. I simply don't have the bandwidth to participate in yet another links-and-groups type site.

That doesn't mean the move won't be successful. Successful businesses must learn how to fire customers, and I recognize that I may be among the customers fired.

Update: I posted/emailed my previous reaction before the jury-rigged grandfathering in of the Posts mechanism into Boards happened. I will grudgingly admit that that's an acceptable compromise. You can no longer title individual posts, but then you can't on Facebook and Google+ either. Other observations still stand though.