The Zargon » Social Media

Tutorial: How to add the +1 inline feature to your self-hosted WordPress blog

Fernando Fonseca — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 19:08:20 +0000

Google has been rolling out new features for its +1 button. Today it has announced the rolling out of sharing to Google+ directly from any website which will make sharing of content easier for everyone.

Another feature already available is the inline button, where users can see who, from their connections, has +1 any article on any website, as seen in the picture below

In order to be able to see it, for now, you will have to be a part of the Google+ Platform Preview. From my experience acceptance is immediate.

How to add the inline +1 button to your WordPress blog:

1. Go to Google’s Webmasters site

2. Choose “inline” as your “Annotation” style from the drop down box and choose the size of the button (or leave it as it is by default)

3. Copy this resulting code that starts with

4. Go to your self-hosted WordPress blog

5. Click on Appearance

6. Click on editor

7. Choose “Header.php” from the templates available from the list on the right side

8. Paste the code between the and tags

9. Click on the “Update file” button

Your button is ready.

All you have to do is to include where you want your button to appear in your posts. Make sure you include this code in HTML view.

Namesake gets into the social sharing space with Chill.com

Fernando Fonseca — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 17:41:51 +0000

Chill is a product from the same team that is behind “Namesake“, the niche social network. Chill allows you to watch videos with others and the launch happens on the same day that Google announced that users are now able to start an hangout on Google+, right from YouTube, to watch any video that is available on that social network.

Chill.com is, in all aspects, just like Turntable.fm but it allows you to watch videos instead of just listening to music. The site is still in beta and you can only get in via invite or, if any of your friends on Facebook is already in, you can also have access.

The main problem that I see with Chill has to do with the attention span needed to be on the site. Unlike Turntable.fm, where you can just join a room and listen to the music on the background, videos are, by definition, a visual experience – meaning that you are supposed to have that tab of your browser open to fully enjoy the experience.

Samuel Davis, last night on Google+, wrote a comment about this very issue that perfectly explains this:

When I personally watch videos online, my Internet ADD is such that if it’s longer than 5 minutes I usually think long and hard about whether or not I’ll be able to watch the entire thing uninterrupted, or if I’ll be tempted to jump to another tab to finish reading that article that I started 10 minutes ago but left for the very same reason.

Of course that the social sharing experience can change all of this and the service might appeal to a younger Facebook generation: the chat feature on Chill lets you chat in real time with others in the room while watching a video but not much else: There is a lack of control over the video that is playing (pause, rewind, fast forward) that, if added, would feel more natural and more in line with what people do when watching a video together.

Below you can find a short video showing how Chill works. What do you think? Will you use it? Will it gain traction? Let me know in the comments.

Post Image: “My New Television Set“ Some rights reserved by brandon king

Possible Facebook Numbers

Fernando Fonseca — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 18:53:59 +0000

Facebook keeps saying that it has have “750 million users” but are there really 750 million active users on Facebook?
In this motion graphic’s video some questions are made.
All numbers were referred to me by my imaginary cat, one of the most amazing tech and social media experts that I know.

Concept and Direction: Fernando Fonseca
Voice over: Donna Winter
Soundtrack: Fernando Fonseca

Dear @GetGlue… (An open letter to @alexiskold)

TheZargon — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 21:46:43 +0000

Dear Alex,

I have been using GetGlue for a while and I’ve always loved your service. Yes, there were things that annoyed me about it but I kept on using it because I believed that you and your team were working hard to make the whole user experience better. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened and, as an example, the Android application is still a shadow of what it could be. On top of that, GetGlue didn’t become more social and didn’t allow me to, in a easy way, connect with other people that had similar tastes. Still, I kept using your service almost on a daily basis.

I ordered my first batch of stickers and never got them. Was I mad? Not after reading all the comments on your Facebook page showing I was not alone. Naively I thought that I would get some e-mail from GetGlue telling me why I hadn’t gotten my stickers and what the new ETA was. Weeks passed, I kept using GetGlue and nothing: no badges, no e-mail, nothing.

Yesterday I went to my Facebook profile and my news feed was filled with posts from GetGlue, all sent at exactly the same time. I made a screenshot and posted it on your Facebook wall and also tweeted it.

You see, I am one of those people who thinks social media can also be used as support channel and I’ve even written some posts about it. The following image is the dialogue I had with the GetGlue representative:

As you can see, Alex, there is not even a hint of an apology in it. “It’s from our blog,” was the first contact I’ve ever had with your company on Twitter or in any other channel since my mails to support have always been ignored. Stating the obvious—that the posts were from your blog—was not really the reply I had in mind. But, your representative didn’t stop there, oh no! In the next sentence I was being instructed to hide the posts from my Facebook feed. How does this help me? I “liked” your page to get relevant information about your product and your recommendation is to hide your content? How does this help YOU? You want one less person reading your information rather than make your Facebook page appealing and useful to your users?

The cherry on the top of this incident came when I was told to e-mail your support team. Let’s face it, after posting it on your Facebook wall, tweeting about it mentioning your brand, and telling you what the problem was you still want me to e-mail you? Why? Isn’t the Facebook post and the tweet feedback enough?

How much would it take to reply to my original tweet or comment: “Hey, we’re sorry for that. We’re working out the kinks! We will get it fixed asap.” A similar tweet would’ve been a retweet by me with a “Thanks!” but instead here I am, writing you this open letter.

GetGlue is a social tool and one that as a lot of potential but you can’t be a social tool and not be social in the way you interact with your users, no matter who they are. I go to your Facebook page and all I see is people complaining about not getting their stickers, people giving great feedback and not being listened to, even people offering to work for free so that the users can get their stickers and from your part only silence.

I’m sure you can do better and I hope that you take this post not as a rant but as a (last) attempt to reconcile myself with your service and please consider me totally available to speak with you about this and other things that could make GetGlue better for everyone.

Image: “Covering all your existence“ Some rights reserved by Pulpolux !!!

Twitter conversation by Aaron Swartz

5 ways that Google Plus changed my daily habits (in less than 2 weeks)

TheZargon — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 19:10:27 +0000

Google+ is evil. I used to have a daily routine and that routine is now gone for good.

1. The first thing I do in the morning when I wake up is to check my notifications on the G+ mobile app. It used to be checking the Android Market for updates
2. I only check Twitter and Facebook briefly and only to reply to mentions or DMs. I used to be on Twitter most of my free time.
3. Instead of writing long blog posts I start discussions that get more than 40 (great) comments
4. I totally forgot I have World of Warcraft, Starcraft and Age of Empires III installed on my computer
5. I can’t stop thinking about how Google+ will have an impact on the way we experience social networking; Donna and I spend a lot of time talking about this.

Fortunately I am not alone. When I posted these thoughts* on Google+ yesterday I got more than 20 shares, within the first minutes and comments as well.

Brian McDaniel, that has a solid following on Twitter and Facebook, came up with his own five habits that Google+ changed:

1. I definitely check G+ notifications and stream first in the morning, then email, Twitter, and FB in that order.
2. I am spending more time in what seem to be worthwhile, quality conversations on G+. While I can’t necessarily feel good about the increase in time spent, I am overjoyed with the value of the conversations
3. I tend to want to post links, resources, checkins at locations and photos on G+ first or instead of my other social networks.
4. I already use my Android phone for G+ more than I’ve ever used it for FB or Twitter. The quality of the app and ease of use is far superior to the others.
5. My schedule and ways of posting to social media is changing to adjust for G+. I actually want to be here and see what others are saying more than anywhere else.

Some others, like Dwyndal Dee, joined the discussion making very interesting points:

1. I look to G+ for entertainment and knowledge. Before it was FB entertainment (ohh viral misery) and Twitter for knowlege.
2. I’m actually using my brain more and engaging in conversations with people not just 140 chars back and forth.
3. The app is so much easier to use than any i have used socially. Before it was seesmic and tweetdeck but they were limted. I find it too laborious to post elsewhere and don’t really feel the need.
4. The site is so clean and useful with functions, I want to test them all once more are implemented Facebook was ok but so much spam and game reports it was annoying. I ended up muting half my friends or making an alternate account just for them and i never use it.
5. I can pull people such as +tracky_birthday

Google+: First impressions and how to get your Facebook friends there

TheZargon — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 22:50:15 +0000

The Internet is pretty excited about Google’s newest attempt to enter the social media realm. After disappointing experiences with Google Wave and Buzz, many were skeptic about the search giant’s ability to make something that would actually work in an intuitive way. After some hours exploring Google+ my opinion is that this time Google got it right. There are some interface issues, features that are missing and that one could expect to be already integrated but, overall, the user experience is great and the system doesn’t feel buggy at all. At the moment I am writing this post Google+ invitations are still unavailable, but they are rolling out steadily and you can request your invite here if you haven’t already: Google+ invites.

Fighting Facebook with Circles

The Google+ team has been listening to what the main complaints about Facebook are: privacy concerns or the Kafkaesque venture of organizing your “friends” into different lists, just to name a few. Google+’s solution for this is called Circles, something that reminds me of the Diaspora* project but, unlike the open source project, allows you to add one contact to several circles, which replicates in a better way the relationships we all have.

These “Circles,” and the way you organize them, will be the basis of your experience when on Google+. Good organization will allow you to have a better experience and don’t worry, your contacts will never know in what circle you put them in.

Hanging out

Remember how you have a video chat with lots of people on Google Wave? On Google+ you can do that too with a major difference: it actually works. Up to 10 people can join a Hangout to talk, text chat and share videos. I am sure that other types of media and features will be added (Soundcloud comes to mind as well as Google’s own Calendar) making the Hangout not only a social space but a working space as well.

The Android factor: Huddle and Instant Upload

As soon as I got my Google+ invite (courtesy of my partner in life and everything geek, Donna Winter), I downloaded the Android application and was immediately hooked. The user interface is clean and it brings with it “Huddle” which seems to be Google’s attempt to take on RIM’s BBM. With 500,000 Android devices being activated every day “Huddle” has the potential to become the preferred instant messaging service for millions of users. The Google+ team didn’t stop here and seems to understand how mobile plays a huge role in our life. Instant upload is a hassle free sharing feature that does exactly what it’s name says: Take a picture or shoot a video with your Android device and it will be immediately uploaded to a private album on your Google+ account. You can then edit the caption and share with your circles if you wish. What I’m missing here is seamless integration with YouTube, meaning that I would like to have an option to upload the videos straight to my YouTube account via Google+ but I expect to see this happening in the near future.

So, is it all good on Google+ and will it kill Facebook?

The answer clearly is no and maybe. There is much to be done and some of the options in Google+ don’t make much sense right now. One of those options is the introduction of something that they are calling “Sparks.”

“Sparks” are based on search keywords but they are not a part of your stream and that’s a problem. If you’re interested in a certain subject the probabilities that you want to know what is happening are surely high. What I would really like to see is total and seamless integration of my Google Reader feed within my stream but, for this to happen, Google+ has to quit bumping posts to the top with every comment that is made on them. This is something that is really annoying since it doesn’t allow for new content to be discovered.

To be a Facebook contender Google+ has to attract developers able to create the kind of applications that have users hooked on Facebook and should work on the user’s desktop and mobile devices, then find a way to monetize the applications. This is a big challenge but it brings with it a lot of creative opportunities.

Sharing on other social networks is also mandatory: if Google+ wants to win this war it has to allow users to share from their desktop or mobile, their updates with other social networks and applications, and become the social media center for its users. There is an extension already available for Chrome but it forces you to post and then share to Twitter and/or Facebook.
ProTip: Taking your Facebook friends to Google+

At the moment Google+ only allows you to import your HotMail or Yahoo contacts while your Gmail contacts will already be listed. This is a bummer for those of us that don’t use Yahoo or Hotmail right? Fortunately there is a hack that you can use to import all of your Facebook contacts onto Gmail. As far as I know it only works with Google Chrome and the process has some glitches but it actually works.

The step by step goes as follows:

Open Google Chrome and login to your Facebook account.
Open a new tab and install the “FacebookFriendExporter” extension
Refresh (press F5) your Facebook. You will notice that you have now a new option called “Export Friends!”

Click on “Export friends!” and a message will pop-up asking you if you want to be redirected to your friends page.
Wait for all your contacts to be processed. If some contacts are not processed just close the page and click on “Export friends!” again. The extension keeps a log file of the contacts that were already exported and will only export those that are not processed.
Export your contacts to Gmail using Oauth.
By now you should find on your Gmail’s contacts a new group called “Imported from Facebook.” If you go to Google+ you will see them on the “Find and Invite” tab on your “Circles” page and you will be able to see which ones are already using Google+ and add them to your circles.

Final Comments

There is a lot to be done to make Google+ THE social network but Google started on the right foot. In my opinion the most appealing features are the ones that allow you to share your mobile life in a very easy and transparent way. I am sure that we will see many Android developers integrating Google+ with their applications and others that will make sharing to other social networks from within Google+ a seamless experience.

Find me on Google+ and please leave your thoughts in the comments.

Pearltrees launches update but falls short on expectations

TheZargon — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 18:10:48 +0000

Pearltrees, the social curation tool that I have learned to use and love, has launched version 0.8.1. The update focused on enhancing the team’s experience as well as on the overall user experience.

Team management’s improvements

The ability to have a group of people, or teams, curating a certain pearl is one of the biggest advantages of Pearltrees. With this update team founders are able to establish and communicate what the objective of any pearl is but not only that: team communication, a new pearl history panel – that allows reverting any pearl to a previous point in time – were also added on this update. This is something that will be welcomed by team founders and by users overall, I am sure.

User Experience

It’s on the user experience that this update left me a bit puzzled: I can’t see why the Pearltrees team chose to change the way you navigate within the application since it was already intuitive and it will probably confuse users. The rule “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” should’ve been applied here: as daily user, it has taken me sometime to adapt to the new navigation. One example is drag and drop behavior: you can drag and drop your own pearls anywhere on the screen but you can’t do that with someone else’s pearls. This alone kind of damages the consistency of navigation within Pearltrees, something that didn’t happen in the past and also makes it more difficult to visually arrange the workspace.

On a very personal note I also don’t understand why scrolling the mouse wheel doesn’t zoom in and out – something that just comes naturally when using a mouse.

In a nutshell

Team management improvements on this update of Pearltrees are to me what really matters and that is something that is welcomed and will facilitate the way one manages and oversees pearls that are being curated by a team. But what I would really like to see on a next update – and was expecting on this one – are features that will allow me to use Pearltrees in a way that is more organic. Individual pearl’s privacy is one of those features (like I wrote about on this previous post) but not only: the ability to be able to search my drop zone for content, delete all content on my drop zone – 5 days of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona have left my drop zone totally unmanageable -, select more than one item on my drop zone are features that should be already included on Pearltrees. One of the other features that I would like to see would be to have YouTube video playing on the preview window that could be resized instead of having to click on it only to be met with a zoomed in version that looks bad, especially on a 19” monitor like I have on my laptop.

The improvements on navigation, in my opinion, have brought no added value. Don’t get me wrong: I love Pearltrees and I think that it is a really well developed web application but I would like to see it evolving on a direction that would allow me to use it in more creative and productive ways.

Image:”Pearl” Some rights reserved by amboo who?

Pearltrees Reaching 10 Million Page Views-Will Introduce Private Curation “Soon”

TheZargon — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 14:52:13 +0000

My enthusiasm for Pearltrees, the social curation tool that raised the bar with its intuitive interface and neat features, is well known. After my Pearltrees review in December, and using Pearltrees on a day-to-day basis within several projects, I recently had the chance to ask Oliver Starr, Pearltree’s Chief Evangelist, a few questions about the present and the future of the platform.

FF (Fernando Fonseca): Pearltrees has been received very well. What kind of growth have you seen since the announcement of the new “Team Up” feature?

OS (Oliver Starr): We launched the Team feature in December. We are very pleased with the growth since then and currently are seeing more than 100,000 unique visitors per month to the site and we are also approaching 10,000,000 page views.

FF: Have you considered implementing a feature that allows a group of people to curate content only between them? Something like private Pearltrees?

OS: Yes, of course. We receive a tremendous number of requests for privacy features. This is in our plans and will be released soon but we don’t have a firm date for this feature release at this time.

FF: What examples do you have of people using Pearltrees in a way that you didn’t think of?

OS: Of course we are very pleased with all the different ways in which people are using Pearltrees. Some examples are:

Wikileaks

This team formed spontaneously almost as soon as we released team. It now has over 20 members and continues to curate news, and other information related to the WikiLeaks story.

TED

Originally the work of a single individual this is fast becoming one of the world’s most popular Pearltrees and is an amazing organization of all the most important TED talks.

LeWeb

Put out as a means of introducing the new Team feature at LeWeb, this is a great example of how Pearltrees Team can be used to collaboratively curate a conference among people that are attending or following online but whom may not know one another

FourSquare

This is a Pearltree that I’ve curated myself that shows off how you can use Pearltrees and Foursquare (via Pearltrees Twitter Sync) to build cool city-guides using your FourSquare Checkins

FF: What were the biggest challenges in getting Pearltrees out there?

OS: The biggest challenge was to have started a company focused on curation when at the time we launched, the term curation had not yet appeared in the tech ecosystem as a popular or important term.

FF: How more social will Pearltrees get? 2011 is bound to be the mobile internet year, according to many. How are you planning to follow that trend?

OS: Pearltrees is already highly social. That said we are continuing to refine and improve the team/social features. Further we are continuing to optimize Pearltrees for every tablet. The results of these efforts are already apparent on Android tablets and the experience will continue to improve as time goes on.

Conclusions

Private curation, managed by one individual or a group of individuals, will be very welcomed and will probably attract other kind of users to the platform. This is one of the features that I am missing the most on Pearltrees when using it on some projects – monitoring content regarding a certain subject that is sensitive – and when you are able to setup any given pearl as private I can imagine many companies will start using it to aggregate links that are for internal consumption and used for crisis management.

PearlTrees: Social Bookmarking introduces Teams

TheZargon — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 18:18:18 +0000

PearlTrees

I have been playing with PearlTrees for awhile now and the more I use with it the more I enjoy it.

I have never been really organized with my bookmarks; I always start really neatly but it always ends up in a big mess. This was true until I came across PearlTrees.

PearlTrees is a web based visual bookmarking system that allows you, with a click of a button, to save any web page into it. Not only does it create a bookmark but also a visual thumbnail of the page you can access within pearltrees by chosing the “Show Detail” button on the bottom left side of Pearltrees’ screen. To install it you just need to open an account and follow the instructions. Your account will be created and you then install a widget on your browser.

You can organize your bookmarks any way you want within a tree structure (thus the name) and, for the ones like me that are concerned about the graphic design of everything, you can even customize your pearls so that it’s functional and looks nice. Your bookmarks are then available wherever you are from any computer available or compatible smartphone like an Android. Sorry folks but iPhone is NOT a smartphone no matter how hard you try.

Pearltress running on @technobozo's Android Nexus One

This alone would already make Pearltrees a very interesting tool. But there is more.

PearlTrees’ Twitter integration

PearlTrees allows you to integrate your twitter account. You can bookmark all your tweets and even organize them automatically by using hashtags. You can automatically tweet any bookmark you make using the PearlTrees’ button. If you tweet a lot, like me, please take into consideration that one pearl only allows for 100 pearls within it so plan carefully when starting your structure.

The solution I have found was to make monthly pearls within each main pearl. This allows you to organize your bookmarks in a structured way and not running out of space within your pearls.

PearlTrees: Bookmarks into Social Networking

This is one of the features that I really like about PearlTrees. You can pick someone else’s bookmarks, being it their main pearl or any pearl within someone’s account and make it a part of your own structure. This means that, without much effort, you will be able to keep updated with what other people found interesting. Every time one of the external pearls you have picked is updated you will see a “New” notification next to it. But the social side of PearlTrees doesn’t stop here.

You can leave a comment on other’s people pearls, thus starting a content based dialogue and you can share any pearl on Twitter, Facebook and even embed it on any website (just like above).

Sharing your pearls

As you can see in the image there are several ways you can share a pearl: click on the “show detail” button on the bottom left side of the screen and chose “share this pearl” and you have the option to share it with any PearlTrees user, send out your share on Twitter, on your Facebook wall, send it via e-mail or get a permalink to the pearl you can embed and share in all sorts of ways (hint: PearlTrees has its own tiny URL service pear.ly but you can still use bit.ly to make a shorter or customized link to your pearl). There is one more option: embed your pearl. When you choose this option a new menu will appear where you can customize the dimensions of your pearl so it fits perfectly in your blog, website or wherever just like you can see below.

PearlTrees’ Search Function

Pearltrees allows you to make 3 types of search within its ecosystem:

1. PearlTrees: The search result will return the maximum amount of 50 pearls on any given query but it still has some problems. I have tried a search for “Wired”–with and without the quotes–and included in the results were pearls that related to “Wire” magazine. For a moment I felt like I was back at the place where I usually buy both magazines and they always get them mixed up.

2. My Account: This search mode will return all your pearls containing your query. This is really useful as you can imagine.

3. People: This will return users that fit your query. My opinion is that there is a limited use to it and, like when searching within Pearltrees, the system doesn’t work properly: a search for “fjfonseca” returned not only my pearls but also those of a user named “fhfonseca”.

team up

Recently introduced, “team up” brings to peartrees yet another level of socialization and it looks like a wink with a big smile to corporations. “team up” basically allows you to build teams that will contribute to a single pearl. You can recruit your contributors via twitter, facebook or e-mail and the whole process is very very straight forward as you can see on the image on the left side.

You start by choosing a pearl you want to build a team with (Step 1) – this can be a pearl that you already have or a brand new one – and you can then (Step 2 and 3) use twitter or facebook to promote your pearl and get people to contribute to it. But not only: What I think it is really powerful is the ability to invite by e-mail since it allows you to target specific people to start contributing to your pearl making it possible, for example, that you show on your company’s website what everyone in your company is bookmarking or finding interesting and share it internally and with your clients/the world.

When you receive an invitation to collaborate on a pearl (Step 4) you choose where you want to nest it within your own structure and as soon as you do that the person that invited you (Step 5) chooses to accept you or not.

As soon as the participation is confirmed (Step 6) you will be able to start collaborating on that pearl and the new member of the team will be able to invite other’s (Step 7) to collaborate on it.

To me, this is really a game changer in the way we look at our bookmarks since they can become a truly collaborative and social experience.

Conclusions

To me bookmarking will never be the same. PearlTrees allows me to have it all in one place and at the same time keep in touch with what others in my network find interesting and also find new resources for information. Search within PearlTrees is limited and I am not sure what the criteria is when searching for a determined keyword. Also, on the downside, the one-tweet-per-hour limit that the user has when wanting to share new pearls with their twitter timeline.

The new “team up” feature really opens new possibilities in how we build our bookmarks and how we share them and I think that many people will find a great use to give to it being corporate, academic or just small groups of people with one interest in common.

What will the future bring for PearlTrees? I don’t know but it looks promising.

In the meanwhile you can connect with me by clicking here: http://www.pearltrees.com/fjfonseca/ or clicking on the “team up” button above on a pearl that you are interested in contributing to. I look forward to it and happy sharing!

There is Something About Quora

TheZargon — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 15:44:33 +0000

I was recently introduced to Quora, a new social network that focus on knowledge. In its own words “Quora is a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it. The most important thing is to have each question page become the best possible resource for someone who wants to know about the question.”

In other words, Quora is a knowledge database built by the community, for the community regarding any subject. Unlike Wikipedia, that takes its model from a traditional encyclopedia, Quora’s users can ask whatever they want and get answers from like-minded individuals–from business strategy to if people work naked when they work from home–all is accepted as a question and there are always people to share their point of view according to their own experience.

It is here where Quora really excels. Make a question about “Y Combinator” and you will probably get an answer from one its venture partners; make a question about Google or Android and you will get an insight from people that work or used to work there. The beauty of it is that it doesn’t stop or stays focused on Silicon Valley and technology or social media subjects: cooking, best day trips, sociology, psychology, art, you name it; Quora is a growing database of knowledge made by its vibrant community.

How Quora Works

Topics

When you first join Quora you can chose topics that you are interested in. If you were invited the person that invited you also has the chance to recommend to you some topics they know you would be interested in. That will get you started in what comes to topics.

Network

Quora uses Facebook and Twitter so you can start following your friends within Quora. You will see that the more questions and topics you start following you will be inclined to follow people that are involved in the same topics and whose answers you appreciate.

Ask, Answer, Comment, Thank, Vote

To ask a question all you have to do is type it in. After that you will be able to “host” that question in a topic (or several if that is the case). Your question will then be available to everyone following those topics thus generate answers.

There are no constraints to how many questions you can answer (even if you are not following those topics and you just came across it via someone on your timeline or by search) but you can only answer once. You are able to edit your answer at any time and comment on others’ answers where and when you feel appropriate.

A important part, in my opinion, of the whole system is that you are able to vote or thank for any answer given to a question which allows others know that you found that answer helpful.

You are also able to vote an answer as not relevant/helpful to the question and the question will be hidden from the timeline but you are still able to see it’s content if you choose.

Quora Pros and Cons

Pros

1. Ease of use: The interface design is clean and intuitive and allows you to easily navigate the site. The timeline shows you new questions from the topics you are following and the activity of the people you are following as well. Anytime there is activity on a question you are following (a new answer, comment or vote) you get a notification.

2. An interesting community: It is much better to know the secrets for cooking the perfect Peking duck from someone that cooks and lives in Peking (Beijing) than from a cookbook written by a French person. Quora has managed to bring to its network lots of high-profile people that are answering questions that relate to their companies or former companies (the case of Johnathan Abrams, ex-Friendster, comes immediately to my mind).

3. A free advice network from like minded individuals: Unlike Twitter, Quora’s noise ratio is very small. The fact that, if you want, you can only follow one or two topics without even following anyone helps keeping that noise ratio low. This means that when you post a question about, say, karaoke you will only get answers from people that are into karaoke.

4. Twitter and Facebook Connect: When you sign into Quora you will be able to check which of your contacts/friends from Twitter and Facebook are already on Quora. This will help you get started on the network by giving you suggestions to follow people you are already connected with, see their activity as well as the topics they are following.

Cons

1. Quora’s user base: At the moment the user base is still small but as this changes the noise ratio in the most popular topics will surely go up. I have already witnessed some questions to which the answer could easily be found by making a Google search and some other questions that are made by people that are just trying to prove some kind of obscure point without even knowing what they are talking about.

2. Spam: As Quora’s user base grows one can expect more spam, which is already happening especially on Twitter related topics. (Yes @Klout representative, this is for you.)

3. Addictive: This should also be on the “Pros” but Quora really should come with a “consume with caution” warning. Quora is addictive because, if you are like me, you will see one question and another and another and you want to answer to it or make a comment, or comment back on a comment and suddenly two hours have gone by. Of course you can consider this work, as I do for some topics, but I would strongly advise that you force yourself to only spend some limited amount of daily or weekly time on the site.

4. Anonymous users: This is, in my opinion, a big drawback. You have to register yourself to participate in Quora but you have the option to create a question anonymously and also to answer questions anonymously. Anonimity, these days, is mostly used by people that have something to say but don’t have the balls to say it using their name. That Quora supports this kind of behavior is something I still can’t understand since Quora states on their About Quora page, “Everything on Quora is tied back to a person.” Each question and answer has a revision history associated with it, and each change in the log is associated with the person who made it. People use their real names and pictures on Quora and have a short bio describing who they are; this helps anyone reading things they write to understand why they should believe what is written and take into account the author’s perspective.”