Quora

Quora is an information platform that allows people to share knowledge through its Q&A format. Through its forum, users can ask questions, answer questions, and debate those answers. Questions and answers are arranged by topic, and users can follow topics they are interested in or query the database and surface relevant conversations. Quora also offers a research tool that allows users to create social networks and follow topics of interest. Quora intends to focus on high-quality questions and answers through user votes, which help highlight accurate information. Quora also offers users a personalized feed of answers to questions they have asked or to questions on topics they are interested in.

Quora was founded in 2009 by CEO Adam D'Angelo and Charlie Cheever and is headquartered in Mountain View, California.

At the time of its launch, Quora focused on developing a base of intelligent and committed participants and has continued to interest its users through useful and interesting content personalized to individuals through its feed. Further, the platform is accessible to all, based on Quora's desire to democratize knowledge, and is run entirely by its user community. Users post and answer questions, and other users in the community can up-vote or down-vote the answers (similar to other popular social forums). The answers with the most up-votes are highlighted and viewed the most.

In 2021, Quora launched a program to allow users to earn money from their content on the platform. With what the company is calling Quora+, users pay $5 per month (or a $50 one-time payment) to access paywalled content, and 95 percent of the subscription payments are then to be distributed to the content creators posting to the platform, according to Quora.

In 2018, Quora introduced a new feature called Spaces, where users could form collections and communities around shared interests and tastes. Spaces was developed to allow people to curate interesting answers and links about specific areas of interest; organize their own writing into different sections; and gather a community of people in a space where they could share conversations.

Quora also introduced business-focused solutions where businesses could use the Quora platform for advertising, including using the Q&A format to build brand awareness and credibility, to help drive traffic to a website or related marketing content in order to increase conversions, or to target and convert on leads looking for solutions a business offers. Quora for Business also introduced advertising onto the platform, where a business's name and description is populated beneath a related question and answer.

In 2023, Quora unveiled a new artificial intelligence chatbot, named Poe, for public access. The chatbot was built on generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT and Claude, and allows users to ask questions, to which it generates responses. Poe was initially available through the company's iOS app and was intended to offer users a chance to interact with AI chatbots, and for the developer of generative AI chatbots to use Quora's platform to reach users. Further, the chatbot was built to work much like the wider Quora platform, with users offered a chance to share model outputs with other users, similar to up-voting popular answers.

Much like other chatbots, Poe allows users to ask questions, have it write code, or offer the user advice. And Poe shares the same features and limitations of other ChatGPT or Claude-based chatbots. However, Poe does offer users the chance to select between chatbots, making it a more fully-featured AI offering. Users are restricted in the amount of questions they can ask Poe a day, with Quora offering a subscription for unrestricted access.

In 2018, Quora announced the company had been hacked, with the names, email addresses, passwords, and questions asked of 100 million users compromised. The company notified affected customers and engaged in a digital forensic process. Further, the company noted they did not, at the time, gather sensitive user information, which limited the potential impact of the hack.