In checking out this week's resources and readings, I came across Quora. A question-and-answer website, isn't that just google?
I was intrigued so thought I would dig a little more, of course, the first thing it asked me to do was log in. All these communities that require you to sign-in to them! It is starting to feel like an attendance sheet that goes around class!
As a Google aficionado, I was still skeptical, and while signing in to help create community I understand, I wasn't totally sold! So I decided to do some digging. I checked out the website some more and learned, surprise surprise, the company is located in the Silicon Valley (ahh, home, where the produce is grown down the street and everything is gorgeous and perfect, besides having no water), and after finding this Wikipedia page (it seemed fitting for this week's resources), found out that it was founded by two former Facebook employees and has technically been around since 2009/2010! There were a few other interesting pieces on it, like it runs logarithms, just like everyone else I guess, so that you see things once you've asked questions, or up voted different questions or answers based on what you have done in the past. You are required to use your real name (not a screen name), or your Facebook, Twitter, or email account, so folks know who you are.
I will say I had a good laugh when I clicked around on Wikipedia's list of other q&a websites - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Q%26A_sites. Poor ole' Jeeve has gotten left out of Ask.com, and I was reminded when former students of mine were super excited (and getting paid, if I remember correctly), asking questions via text message and websites on ChaCha (they loved saying it, thought it was so fun, Cha-Cha!), and contemplated if I ever had actually seen a beneficial answer on Yahoo Questions. Like, really, ever.
But still, I'm back to this dilemma about logging in. Do I want to join another community, perhaps just to explore it? Do I have the time to structure the questions I want to ask, to like people's responses, to respond myself? Do I link it to my Twitter account (usually my go to because it is a little less personal than gmail or Facebook account), or should I try to remember another password? Can a question answering site fit some need in my life that Google doesn't? Will they give me doodles?!?!
Is anyone else feeling this? Is someone loving Quora that can tell me what it gives you you don't get elsewhere? Are you finding a good way to manage all the tools to your advantage? Let me know!
I think that is one of the challenges with so many new web 2.0 tools, which ones to use. Some that we even have experienced in our course are more beneficial then others and I think that each person has to decide which ones they plan on maintaining and using. I Have already had to unsubscribe to so many of the email blasts that these web 2.0 tools send out once you join it. I like that we are able to explore and find out what works for us but I also feel like this summer will be over and we will have 20 more to explore as people are developing these applications so fast but are they really anything new or just a new box? I do like symbaloo and set it as my home screen. I kind of like having the shortcut type feature for the web visualize in front of me, just wish they would let you place them into labelled categories in one webmix.
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