Reddit & Quora: For the curious minds

Questions and answers have existed since humanity did. The curiosities, the reasons that generate curiosity, the reasons that satisfy it, all are the signs of an ever functioning human mind. Just as humanity evolved, technology did too. And along with that, did our curiosity to question and the urge to know the answer.

When the extent of the search became so wide, we needed the presence of a public platform to answer them. That’s when two roommates from the University of Virginia, Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian understood the need for a discussion platform and co-founded REDDIT in 2005. Soon enough in 2009, Adam D’Angelo, and Charlie Cheever co-founded Quora and its identity is simple – a question-and-answer site.

Both these sites, Reddit and Quora are gaining a lot of momentum in the online community ever since. Being platforms where people can discuss anything under the sun, both these sites have their own identity which cannot be messed around with.

Reddit functions through an absolutely anonymous identity (unless one chooses to reveal who he/she actually is) whereas Quora requires one to sign-in with an official email ID but, still has provisions where one can choose to be anonymous.

The entries on Reddit are organized into categories and topics called ‘Subreddits’ – for instance, science as a category is a subreddit whereas Donald Trump as a topic is also a subreddit. Subreddits are free to govern themselves but, they do follow a set of moderation rules to improve the community experience. But, if you have a problem with a subreddit, you can simply start your own subreddit. Moreover, Reddit is all about its interesting users. A joke gets more votes than a serious answer on Reddit. This is the reason it has an unadulterated free speech policy.

Fun Fact: Reddit makes up for a good laugh sometimes. There are some subreddits that specifically discuss the most out-of-the-box questions. For instance, you will find the most intriguing answer to questions like “I want to just mess up with someone’s mind. What shall I say to that person?”

However, Quora is all about the topic. Suppose, there is something really trending going on in the community. In no time it comes up as a topic on Quora and people from all over the globe reveal their comments on that topic. A conversation thread keeps getting longer and people who are deeply involved in the topic keep following it. That’s when upvotes happen. If a user finds a comment extremely useful, he/she will upvote it. The more upvotes a comment gets, the more relevant it becomes and is shown first. Over time, Quora has proved to be extremely useful for research, be it to students or anyone else who is interested to know public opinion on a topic.

Knowledge Trivia: You’ll find the most not-so-obvious takes on topics that actually from the economy right now. Confused about your opinion about Donald Trump, why not read about him on Quora?

We evolved to a full-cycle where we are intrigued to know about platforms that generate intriguing content. Content is the reason both these communities are largely powerful today. Be it trending or niche, all purposes are served on these sites. Both platforms are excellent social channels and engaging curious minds on multiple topics. Eventually, they are creating possibilities to raise attention and foster discussions across demographics.

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