Quoring is very similar to blogging. Indeed an open source clone of Quora will probably fork out of WordPress soon and already it is not hard to hack a Quora out of WP.

But Quora is better than blogging in one aspect. It addresses the key flaw of blogging, and that is fairness. In blogging, a lucky few who write get a significant number of readers. Blogging is frustrating for most others. The internet is littered with abandoned blogs that few read. Bloggers then lose interest. The way Quora addresses this is that it invites “blogger types” but forces them to behave differently, to take turns at blogging. Quora is like a blog in which, if you choose the subject, you can’t write the article, and if you write the article you cannot choose the subject. Quora has a teacher who does not allow one student to answer questions but actively seeks classroom participation.

I am planning to write a post on Quora but want to get better at understanding it before I do. Still here is a first observation. After 3 years on Twitter I have around 26,000 followers. On Quora I am getting around 200 per day and that is at the very start of Quora. At this rate it will take me less than half a year to have as many followers in Quora as I have in Twitter. Especially considering that the rate will likely go up as it did with Twitter. This I find shocking. Facebook had a slow start. Twitter had a slow start. Still they are both gigantic now. What is going on with Quora that is growing so fast so quickly? Will it be the next big thing? Will it fizzle out like Chatroulette? Should I ask that on Quora?

Avian Flu is proving that blogs may provide adequate balance to global media coverage of important issues such as the Avian Flu. Initially, when global media was not covering the Avian Flu, news were appearing in many blogs as to the dangers that the disease posed to humans. Now that the national media and Bush himself has gone overboard with the dangers of the Avian Flu, blogs are toning the whole issue down and putting it into the right perspective.

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