A better life than Quora. Community: Stack Exchange

Intermediary transaction SEO diagnosis Taobao guest Cloud host technology Hall

During the national day, the founder of the United Huang on the popular TV program "Non-interference", a time to attract a large number of ordinary users of the community know the concern. Know from the early it category, the elite question and answer content more and more to a broader area of expansion, so on the "non-interference" do publicity. It is said that the promotion effect is also good, after the broadcast of the program, a lot of new users. But, like the Quora, the American social questions and answers website is facing the challenge of translating users, traffic and content into revenue. At present, there is no particularly clear pattern from outside.

In fact, in the FAQ site, the best thing to do is stack Overflow, or stack exchange (stack Overflow is the most powerful child station under the stack Exchange platform). Focus on the programmer group of Stack Overflow although not Quora so eye-catching, but in terms of independent access, the number of users are far ahead of Quora (Alexa global rankings, Stack Overflow 58, Quora 428), By August 2013, Stack overflow had 2 million users and 5.8 million problems. It has also created its own revenue model through recruitment and advertising (as discussed below).

Stack Overflow was founded in 2008 by Jeff Atte (Jeff Atwood) and Chor Spolsky (Joel Spolsky). The two founders from New York are famous in the programmer's circle. Jeff is the author of Job horror, a famous technology blogger, and Joel's "Random Software" is also very popular in the country. But in 2012, Jeff left stack Overflow for family reasons.

According to the information disclosed, Stack overflow's last round of financing was the March 2011 round of B: 12 million dollars.

The difference between Quora and stack overflow is that the former is discussing the problem and the latter is answering the question. In the stack overflow problems generally have standard answers, and in Quora more is the answer to their own subjective view of the problem. Users can immediately find the right answer to the problem on stack overflow, while users on Quora can hear voices from different people. Thought is equal, everyone can express their views, no right and wrong, emphasis on "preaching." Skill is wrong, someone is high, someone is low. High explanation, low study, emphasis on "tuition". As a result, there is no extra social function on stack overflow. Joel said in an interview, "I like Quora very much, but we want users to be able to find desperately needed answers on stack overflow, and who the author of the answer is or what it looks like we don't care."

Unlike Quora in the early days of the site to do a comprehensive question and answer site covering all areas, Stack overflow initially only aimed at the programmer this group. After the success of the validation, gradually open the other areas of the child station, forming a stack exchange platform. Currently, Stack Exchange already has 108 sub stations, 7.3 million issues.

The profitability model of the social Networking FAQ site is not very clear. After the explosive growth, these websites all face the question which the profit is difficult. In the past year, a lot of questions and answers websites have been closed. Anonymous FAQ website Formspring in March, in 2010 by Google 50 million acquisition of Aardvark, also in 2011 by Google listed in the death list, team members turned to Google +. For the profit model, Joel said in an answer that stack exchange's profit model is mainly in two areas, recruiting (job listing, CV seach) and advertising. The answers on the stack Exchange platform can reflect the professional level of the user. Joel wants to build a huge, expert user base in every field through stack exchange. Good people are always scarce, and a lot of companies are recruiting on stack exchange (especially IT companies). However, Stack Exchange did not disclose specific revenue figures.

There have been a lot of followers in China since the emergence of the Foreign Social FAQ website. Know, rice and so on, but in addition to know, has basically not heard other questions and Answers website voice. One of the top 20 projects in the first few months of China's new media Entrepreneurship competition was a segmentfault that was similar to a stack of exchange-focused programmers. Segmentfault by the former Word-of-mouth network staff founder, experienced more than a year of development attracted a large number of programmers, the team has participated in and held more than 10 kinds of hacker marathon activities. It is said that some contestants have used the platform to get to know many friends, technical partners and find investments.