In the online realm and the vast World Wide Web, the ‘search’ is invariably on for that next big thing. Quora is one website, which is probably drawing the maximum attention. It allows people to find as well as follow the specific activity of their virtual friends, as on Twitter. It projects itself as ‘a continually enhanced compilation of questions-and-answers that is created, edited, and self-organized by those using it. Each question page is tried to be developed as a comprehensive resource for the topic raised by that question.

It’s already quit popular among, engineers and tech denizens. The conversations on it have moved beyond new media and technology, such as white chocolate, and ways to fight car sickness in babies. Another category that the platform wants to focus on is medical and health questions. It has launched new features to expand informed discussions in those domains. Quora is soon to start legal and medical disclaimers as well as policies around these questions.

Here are some of its features:

• The knowledge into Quora is to be shared with other interested users. Each question page is a reusable resource to assist everyone who has a similar question that the particular page is about.
• Each question-and-answer carries a revision history loosely associated with it. Each change in the log is tied to the person who makes it. People give their identity, real names and photos on Quora and have a short bio describing who they are; this helps anyone reading things they write to understand why they should believe what is written and take into account the author’s perspective.
• Answers don’t necessarily depend on any context about the asker barring for what’s specified in the query text and details. Only one version of a distinct question is there on the platform.
• Each question carries a set of topics that are attached to it to make it easier to locate questions already existing on the website. The topics are used as well for identifying related questions and sometimes provide context to a query.
• Users can follow topics so as the system can display them queries that they are interested in and follow about. They can check individual queries too. This creates a waiting audience for one wanting to write a reply to the question.

So for instance, if Michael Jordan happens to give an answer to a certain question about the game of basketball, what that means is something really insightful you can expect from a celebrity or expert – different from one who has perhaps never played it. The answer and in effect, the entire exercise of asking and answering questions thus becomes that much more significant.

You first need to sign up for the service by creating an account to follow the questions of your choice on the system.