Quora: What's the Big Deal?

I’ve asked this before, but I think it needs to be asked again.  Can someone (anybody) please explain what it is about this Q&A site craze that is going on these days?  Every tech guy (except me it seems) is hyping up Quora as the next big thing. While I admit I said the next big thing will involve communication, I don’t think this is it.  Let me explain.

What is Quora?  To me, Quora is nothing more than a glorified Yahoo Answers.  The only thing Quora has going for it is that very well-respected people within Silicon Valley are on it and answering questions as well as giving advice (and who knows how long that will last).  However, that’s great – if you’re into that type of scene, but then again, most people aren’t.

I understand Quora is still growing, but currently, it is nowhere close to Yahoo Answer’s in terms of traffic and I just don’t see it getting there in its current state.  Right now, Quora is currently in the stage Twitter was in back in 2007 through early 2009.  It’s home to a bunch of tech enthusiasts who think it’s cool and that’s fine, but it cannot stay that way to be considered a success.

Many people are posting suggestions and sharing their ideas about what the future of Quora could be.  The suggestions are fairly typical of the ones that we hear whenever a new social service appears on the scene.  You know, it’s the future of customer service, the future of brand management, the future of this, that, and the other thing.  Which is exactly what you could say Twitter currently has become (to an extent) for companies.  Leading us to the question, as more of these social services appear and start becoming popular will companies be forced to jump onboard them?  I think that is a great topic for a separate post.

Nonetheless, what truly bothers me is the fact people are claiming Quora is completely ground-breaking and innovative blows my mind.  If you look at the service, it is really nothing more (at this point) than a fresh approach to a Q&A site which has been done before and will be done many more times in the future.  Maybe I’m blind, but I just don’t see what’s the big deal.