The mission of Quora is to share and expand the world’s knowledge. Not all knowledge can be written down, and much of what can’t isn’t, It’s still in people’s heads or is only available if you know the right people. We want to connect people who know with people who need it. Bringing people with different perspectives together so they can better understand each other, and empower everyone to share their knowledge for the benefit of the rest of the world.
The heart of Quora questions, questions about the world, questions about recent world events, questions about important life decisions, and questions about why other people think differently. Quora is a website where you can ask questions about topics that are important to you and get answers from people who have been there and done that. Quora is a community of scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, mechanics, and homemakers who come together to share their knowledge.
Humanity has shared knowledge through stories since the first humans gathered around a fire and gazed at the stars. Spaces are digital campfires for collective meaning creation that shift knowledge sharing from interrogative to narrative. In Spaces, creators can reach millions of people with their unique insights or thousands of people with niche knowledge that can’t be found anywhere else.
Great writers explain why the world works the way it does, why people behave the way they do, and what we can all do to make the world a better place. Every week, millions of people search the web for answers and millions more write answers on Quora.
The answers on Quora are provided by people who have firsthand knowledge of the issues. Quora is the place to read Barack Obama’s thoughts on the Iran deal, prisoners’ thoughts on life in prison, scientists’ thoughts on global warming, police officers’ thoughts on deterring burglars, and TV producers’ thoughts on how their shows are made. Quora is a website where you can read inspiring people like Gloria Steinem, Stephen Fry, Hillary Clinton, Glenn Beck, Sheryl Sandberg, Vinod Khosla, and Gillian Anderson directly answering the questions that people want them to answer. Quora is a place where you can read important insights that have never been shared elsewhere, from people you would never be able to reach otherwise.
Quora+ is the company’s first new product; subscribers will pay a $5 monthly fee or a $50 annual fee to access content that any creator chooses to put behind a paywall. These are the same rates that Medium, which does not display advertisements, charges for its membership program. New users can take advantage of a 30-day free trial to see if Quora+ is for them. Quora+ is ideal for those who frequently use Quora and want to unlock unlimited answers. To sign up, you simply need to go on the website and click on Quora+, which is listed at the top of the webpage.
Subscribers will pay Quora rather than specific creators. The money will then be divided among creators “in proportion to the amount each subscriber consumes their content, with more of a subscriber’s contribution going to writers and spaces the subscriber follows.” Creators can enable a dynamic paywall on Quora+ content, which allows free users access to specific posts if Quora believes they are likely to convert to a paid membership; there is also an “adaptive” paywall option, which uses an algorithm to determine whether to paywall content for a specific user on a case-by-case basis. This is intended to assist creators in striking a balance between monetizing their content and growing their audience to attract new potential subscribers.
Quora told TechCrunch that it is still testing Quora+ and cannot yet say what percentage of subscriptions it will take. The other option is for creators to write paywalled posts on Spaces, which are similar to Quora’s user-created publications. Quora will take 5% of the subscription fee, which the creator can choose in comparison, the direct-to-consumer blogging platform Substack takes 10% of writers’ profits, making Quora a competitive alternative. Other platforms, such as Ghost, charge a monthly fee of $9 but allow writers to keep their earnings for writers earning at least $180 per month, Ghost would be more profitable than Quora.
Quora was valued at $1.8 billion in 2017 after raising $85 million, and the platform had 190 million monthly users. According to D’Angelo’s blog post, Quora now has over 300 million monthly users. Despite this user growth, Quora laid off an unspecified number of employees in its San Francisco and New York City offices in January 2020.
Space subscriptions went live today in 25 countries, including the United States. The launch of Quora+ will be delayed as Quora invites a small group of writers to test the platform and determine what works best for subscribers and creators.
