What would happen if Quora added a video upload option? Would it become “QuoraTube”?

Read Scott Welch’s answer to When do you think Quora is going to end? Read it early, and read it often.

Quora is a business, and its business goal is to maximise the exchange of information—and the advertiser eyeballs that exchange attracts. That’s why they hated infographics: they’re not googleable, so they don’t raise the Google Page Rank of Quora pages, so they won’t attract viewers from Google (which is what advertisers want).

What would happen if Quora adds video upload? It would mean they’ve got a good deal going with a video host, and with Text-To-Speech transformation, so they can get more googleable text out of you. Presumably, they’d make the text googlable on the same page, otherwise there’s no Google benefit.

… I have to say, I think that means both Quora and Google would be very different businesses than they are now.

  • Google prioritising hidden text for Page Rank? I don’t see it. Google putting the effort in to make audio on uploaded videos searchable? Text-To-Speech has gotten astonishingly good, but it’s a huge effort, for not clearly enough payoff.
  • Quora embracing media hard to search with current tools—especially tools they don’t control, such as Google? Unless Quora is bought out by Google (which would not be such a terrible thing), I’m not seeing it.

If Quora pushes video answers, as opposing to tolerating videos accompanying text answers, then Quora will no longer be Quora as we know it: it will truly have embraced a social media role. And I gotta say, it’ll be a social media role even I wouldn’t be comfortable with.

It will, in fact, have become QuoraTube.

And I’d argue that, if you want a Tube site for social exchange, you already know where to find YouTube and FaceBook…

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