How is Quora better, worse, or different from Answers.com?

http://www.answers.com/

Answers.com and Quora have very different strengths.

Answers.com‘s key strengths are:
1) A database of about 15 million answers, provided from licensed reference sources and a dedicated community.
2) Nearly 100 million unique visitors every month.

Those two factors make Answers.com a great place to get answers and to spread your message to a large audience. A key related point is that Answers.com is focused on frequently asked questions, and the community collaborates on a single answer for each question.

With Quora you find questions based on personalized topics of self-interest, whereas with Answers every question is pretty random. I mean, you can search for questions based on keywords on Answers, but on Quora the questions find you.
Quora’s key strengths are:

1) Many industry leaders are active on Quora, especially among technology entrepreneurs and journalists.
2) Quora is optimized around following other people, and having people follow your questions and answers.

Those two factors make Quora a great place to engage industry leaders, and to get answers about the technology industry.

Another key point is that Quora is more focused on the people, while Answers.com is focused on the answers. You must read my “Answer Me, Quora.” In many ways Quora is a spin-off of Facebook, with a focus on individuals. In Answers.com you don’t follow other users, you don’t see the answerer’s picture, etc. The focus is on the information.

Finally, Quora has not yet gone mainstream. It’s very strong in certain niches, like the technology industry, but not as strong in some other areas. Answers.com is about five years older, and as mentioned earlier has 15 million answers across many categories.

See my article that goes into further detail, from this link.

About Saul Fleischman

Working with social web apps developers on getting things made: my role tends to be functionality ideation, user experience, and also, marketing communications and community development.