Today the Q&A site Quora announced the debut of boards, which function a lot like stacks do on social bookmarking site, Delicious. Boards organize information around a specific topic, making it simpler for users to follow related content. You can collect similar questions that are already up on Quora and grab links from outside the sites. Considering that Quora is all about questions, why would it choose to go this route?
In a blog post, Quora said that it decided to introduce boards when it realized that people were more interested in finding the most interesting and informative answers written by other users. They weren’t actually using the site for what it was intended, which was asking questions and writing answers. Boards function as another way to organize this type of content, rather than clustering on question-and-answer boards. To create a Quora board, go to “create board” (you can make as many as you want), then post the board. You can also follow other boards.
Similarly, on the new Delicious you create stacks organized around specific interests, and then you can follow other stacks.
The goal of Delicious’ redesign was to appeal to more mainstream users. Quora writes that its new goal “reflects the broader system we are evolving into: to connect you with everything you want to know about.”
As both Quora and Delicious organize around interests rather than questions-and-answers or keywords, both of these sites transform into visually focused topic-specific channels, which look a lot like StumbleUpon’s redesign. It’s true that the social Web has become too cluttered. But is this the best way to organize it?
Are Quora and Delicious doing it wrong? Or is this just how the social Web is evolving? Tell us what you think in the comments.
