I just launched my blog at http://ececconi.quora.com and then opened up an incognito window on Chrome. Navigating to the site took me to the Quora signup homepage. I have to enter in the address again into the bar and press enter to navigate to the blog.
One of the things I dislike most about Quora is how the website obscures the content in attempt to get more people to sign up for it.
Wikipedia didn't need to wall off content to grow. Nor did stackoverflow, everything2, urbandictionary, and basically every user-generated content site since expert sexchange.
These blogs won't draw me back. Many topics have aggregators you can submit you blog to. I would imagine building a readership on Quora will be no easier than running a self hosted blog.
I am incredibly wary of even clicking a Quora link, and when I do it's typically from within the context of an incognito browsing session.
edited : It's a shame, because the content itself can be quite good. I have simply lost confidence in the site, as I do not believe they respect my privacy one iota.
I've never understood the whole logic behind forcing this on people. If your site has interesting content people are going to come to you anyway, if it hasn't then just having an account is going to do little to retain your users back.
As long as there is a infinite supply of free email accounts, I consider this as just another ritual I have to perform to gain passage to a site.
2. De-select every checkbox on Embedding ... and Advanced > Trusted
3. Select: General > Scripts Globally Allowed (Dangerous)
4. Visit quora.com and using the NoScript context menu, mark as Untrusted
5. Or instead of #4, (at least in Firefox) you can access the untrusted list from: about:config > noscript.untrusted ... and then just add quora.com. I also added every news site I visit. Excepting wsj.com is removes every news site's paywall.
Edit: Create your blog here: http://www.quora.com/blog/add
Edit 2: Won't be using this. I can't write code snippets using a monospace font. What gives?
E.g.
[code]
Multiline
code
[/code]
OR
This is some inline code: [code] /usr/bin/xyz [/code]
Feature request: math support.
[math] \sin \theta [/math]
(instead of $)
http://topicmodels.quora.com/Test-post
Still kind of cool to create a blog in two clicks ;)
It's a double edged sword, since (1) might accelerate your path to internet stardom by a little bit, but by taking (2), you lose the control and a large part of the benefit that comes from achieving internet stardom (if that's you thing) in the first place.
If you are looking for marketing enhancers for your online blogging, you're usually at least partly considering some ends beyond increasing eyeballs (affiliate ads, consulting leads, ebook sales, etc.) [1]. Using Quora as your primary platform puts a damper on the output of these 'ends', and using it as a secondary "Crosspost" location fragments your audience and increases your labor overhead anyways.
Addendum: Benefit (2) is largely moot since its upfront cost reduction for a blogger is not going to be significantly larger than Tumblr, if at all.
[1] If you weren't at least considering these things, then you'd probably be happy staying on your own domain.
The Internet is full of experts with no one reading their insights. It takes a lot of work to build a following. So today Quora launches a blogging platform that automatically distributes posts to its Q&A site users who follow related topics. Thanks to its upvote system, home page feed, and a new mobile text editor, anyone with something brilliant to blog, even first-timers, can find a readership.
I guess it's too bad Quora didn't pickup Posterous.
