Why did Quora copy “Facebook group” feature?
The story of Quora Spaces
Quora has a problem.
The platform has great “crowdsourced” content. In fact, in terms of quality, it has some of the best “crowdsourced” content on the internet.
From being “a platform for geeks”, Quora became a mainstream way to share knowledge around 2011–12 time period. Quora answers got shared wildly. Quora content started showing up on the first page of search results. Quora influencers started becoming a trend. The President of the United States started answering on Quora.
Inspite of all this, Quora has not been able to even come close to its’ long time social media big brothers like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Even though Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are fundamentally different from Quora, it is an open truth that all major social media behemoths are in the “media” business. While most Social media became a “media” channel for content to be shared and read, Quora’s content remains within its walls.
In this context, Quora launched the Quora Spaces feature in 2019, to specifically tackle this problem.
According to the company,
Quora’s new Spaces feature allows you to curate collections and form communities around shared interests.
Using this feature, Quora users form new communities around specific topics like Phd, Fiction Writing, Digital Marketing, etc. and share any content around the topics. Just like Facebook Groups.
Why?
- Quora as a content distribution platform — From being just about questions and answers, Quora can now become a place where people shared opinions, articles and any content on the internet.
- Marketing Quora answers — Sharing answers on one’s feed was not a major trend. Yes, there is a Quora feed but that was not the predominant way people consume content on the platform. With Quora Spaces, more people might share good Quora answers more often, thereby increasing the number of answer views.
- Giving more reasons for users to come back — Quora has more reasons to “notify” their users. Before Quora Spaces, Quora notified a user only when something happens on the question they follow or an answer they wrote — which is not much. Quora Spaces can change this.
Effectively, using the Spaces feature, Quora is trying to keep the audience for more time on the platform, thereby entering the race to become the content platform of choice.
Has it worked?
I have to say this —the Quora Spaces feature has changed the nature of Quora to an extent.
1. Better Quora Feed
Whatever said and done, the previous Quora feed experience was not great. Quora used to collect information about the topics we follow and shared trending answers/articles on the topics. But many times such articles made no sense, making the feed useless. Now with the Quora Spaces, I can go directly to my Spaces and check out articles on topics I would love to read and follow.
2. Better Quality of answers related to a topic
If we are following a space that has good contributors, then we don’t have to worry about going through a bunch of half baked and low-quality answers before finding the right content for us.
Quora Space vs Facebook group
With all other things considered equal,
Is a Quora space a better than a Facebook group?
Not yet.
For one, Facebook groups focus on building conversations.
Quora Spaces so far have been mostly limited to sharing content. The feature is used more to “push” content than to get people to create better content.
The way Quora space is designed, it is more like a twitter feed where people share their content but not much of a conversation happens. Even when people do talk in the form of comments, it is not of primary focus on the platform.
The biggest differentiating factor of Quora is the fact that the content generated on the platform is based on reader interest. While many of the other content platforms focus on a “create and distribute” model of content, Quora content is based on what people would like to read. With Quora Spaces feature, Quora has entered the content distribution business, from being just a content creation platform. From a pure strategic point of view, this makes sense. But from a user experience point of view, the differentiation is not huge from other blogging and content platforms. At least not yet.
For Quora Spaces to become more prominent in the lives of readers, there needs to be more content that is unique to the platform. This can only happen through more interesting questions or by building better conversations. Even though a Quora Space owner can create her own questions, this is not the predominant way people use Quora Spaces yet. And with lack of conversations, Quora Spaces continue to lag Facebook groups when it comes to the uniqueness and novelty of shared content. Unless Quora Spaces are able to get users to create more of such unique content on the platform — the feature will just end up being yet another way for Marketing professionals to use and abuse.
Harish is a product story-teller obsessed with human behaviour, technology, and future.
