I came across Quora (www.quora.com) a few months ago while searching for answers to a question I had, but was faced with the rather off-putting message “Access by invitation only” (without an explanation as to how exactly one could get such an invite!), so I veered off on another tangent. And then today, I came across it again in another context and made a determined effort to gain entry (and succeeded!).

Quora is essentially a ‘Question and Answer’ platform and is organised around topic areas rather than interest groups (as Linked In is, for example). In this sense it acts as a kind of maxi-forum.

Quora is not exactly new – it opened to the public (by invitation only) in June 2010, but it already has around 500,000 users – why is it gaining ground in the crowded social media space so quickly, especially since it was so difficult to access?

The key lies in two main reasons:

• The interface is very easy to navigate – you can set up your dashboard so that you receive only messages in the topic areas that interest you, and you can find questions and answers quickly.
• Secondly, the participants are generally sensible professionals who ask interesting questions and provide relevant responses in much the same way they do on specialist forums

One advantage of joining Quora is that you don’t have to be jumping around from one website or forum to the next – almost all the topics a Learning Professional could be interested in can be found in the one site. So, for example, I found discussions on Leadership Development, Leadership Training, elearning, Virtual Worlds, Website construction and so on.

Another advantage is that like Wikipedia, Quora is considered by the search engines as being ‘high authority’, so any response you write will not only be noticed within Quora, but will also be noticed by Google, Yahoo, Bing amongst others (your response to a question could even make Google Page one!). This will support your visibility as a Learning professional to the wider world.

And, of course, if you have a question that you want answered, it’s a good place to start!

If you are a Quora user already, what do you think of it?

If not, and you are faced with the ominous ‘Access by invitation only’ then drop me a line in the comment box below, providing some evidence of your status as a Learning professional (a website, LinkedIn profile etc) and I’d be happy to send you an invitation to join Quora