Quora is from Mars, Instagram is from Venus
Quora and Instagram have both been rocking my world over the past few weeks, for very different reasons. Both provide incredibly intense community experiences. Both use other services to some extent parasitically. Both should - arguably - have been built by existing services (Twitter should have built Quora; Flickr should have built Instagram). Both are much discussed and debated, and growing rapidly.
But that's where the similarity ends.
Quora seems to me to be the intellectual equivalent of Muscle Beach. Sharing how clever you are is its social object. And it works, because this taps deeply into a type of male behaviour that has changed little since men first gathered in the Agora of ancient Athens.
To summarise, it's a place where men ask other men questions, which get answered by more men, and are then rated by men.
By the way, this doesn't make it un-valuable. Let's face it, those Greek guys provided a foundation for the whole of Western thought. And I can see that sometimes I will want to throw a question into this seething cauldron of competing clever-clogs. The answers from experts are often truly interesting, although balancing the good stuff with the noise produced by millions of morons will be a difficult task. The acid test, I guess, will be whether the expert people stay engaged with Quora. Without them, it's just a bunch of blokes gobbing off. Useful? Perhaps. But will I be going there 10 times a day? Perhaps not.
On the other hand, Instagram's charm is the simple pre-verbal delight of sharing something beautiful by showing it to other people. It's even more primal than Quora: more like visiting the cave paintings of Lascaux and Altamira than hanging out with the chaps shooting the breeze. It's about a shared wonder for the world. It's more generous, I think. The subject matter, certainly of the people I am following on Instagram, is mainly 'the things I love or find to be beautiful': meals/food, good times/friends, family/kids, places. It brightens my day, and I am visiting it at least 10 times a day. And I feel really connected to the people in the network. It's weird, and surprising, but in a good way.
Quora and Instagram cater for ancient needs in new ways. Showing off and sharing are two sides of the same coin, but one is mercenary and the other is about generosity. I know which one I find more engaging on a social level.
22 comments
Nicely said Tim…amazingly simple truths—you totally nailed both. Personally, I don’t spend much/any time on Quora, but relative to Instagram…there is something so great about chronicling friends stories through images. It’s just a lovely way to connect. And through beautiful filtered “lenses” nonetheless. Sometimes it’s sharing that moment (a place, a meal, adorable children…) or creating art for your friends to delight them—a little 30 second piece of art. It adds intrinsic value to a shared social experience.
Nice piece Tim; you’ve inherently proven your blokey Quora point too with, “since men first gathered in the Agora of ancient Athens.” and "like visiting the cave paintings of Lascaux and Altamira ". Blokes like to prove they know stuff.
Instagr.am rocks. I recommend following “Betsan” her stuff is immense.
I will follow her now, thanks
I will follow her now, thanks
Quora I can take or leave right now because I think real experts are active in their own expert fora, and I would prefer to seek them out in the natural environment of their own obsessively updated blogs.
As for Instagram, I couldn’t agree more. I quit Twitter after 6 months the first time around because everyone was using it to moan about late flights, early meetings, ugly web design and bad customer service. Anything like Instagram built around “here is something delightful, here is something meaningful, take a second to enjoy this” is an absolute tonic, and leaves you feeling inspired or at least positive after checking your twitter, not completed depleted .
I wish though that people would not use filters. There is nothing wrong with a simple iphone photo – don’t pretend it’s a polaroid or moody lomography. I think people will look back at their filtered photo and think “I wish I didn’t tamper with my memories in that way,” like people regret only saving their photos in low res to save space.
Hi Jess,
Good point re: imagery. I disagree as I like the filters, but then I rarely snap straight from the Instagram app… My instinct is to use the inbuilt camera and then upload to the Instagram app to share it… that way both images get stored in your Camera Roll.
Worth considering maybe?
Steve
Great roundup Tim. Instagram has really stolen my heart. (I’m less keen on Quora and I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with the ‘why’). I agree that Instagram adds a new level of closeness to your network, and it’s great how people are using it to really show off their passions (e.g Diego Zambrano and his food porn pics). Looking forward to seeing how it scales.
I always enjoy your posts, Tim – they’re witty, succinct, and they usually point out something I hadn’t yet realised (but couldn’t agree with more).
I hadn’t used Quora until about ten minutes ago, but I have been using Instagram for a couple of months. I’m not a heavy user, but I like it. I like making photos a little more interesting, and I like seeing what other people have done with theirs. It’s a chilled-out, creative sort of thing… which backs up your theory.
So I just dove into Quora to see whether your Muscle Beach theory holds, and….it’s all men. I follow women and men (and even some brands and companies) but my Twitter-based Quora activity stream is ALL MEN. I had to hit ‘More’ twice to see a female voice, and she writes the New York Times crossword (which isn’t to diminish her womanly creds, but suggests she would be comfortable in any sort of Smarts-A-Thon).
Maybe women don’t need to consciously demonstrate their intelligence all the damn time. To quote an exceptionally bright female friend of mine, “I know I’m smart. They know I’m smart. There’s no need to rub it in people’s faces.”
Lovely analogies, particularly the cave painting comparison with Instagram.
I also think there’s some black magic or voodoo code behind Instagram. How else could my crappy iPhone 3G camera produce such beautiful results? Making you look undeservedly good? There’s an app for that.
Nice summary Tim. For the most part, I agree. However…
When I began using Instagram I remember it feeling very macho, not in content but in it’s apparent focus on showing perfectly composed images, regardless of whether the subject matter was interesting or not. It didn’t feel particularly expressive or representative of what people were actually seeing. Merely a tool to highlight one’s ability to execute good composition through an iPhone camera aka showing off. The comments you make about Quora really resonate with that feeling.
Since then Instagram has evolved and I agree, it’s a delight to use now. So, I wonder if this is merely the first stage in the evolution of a community, yet to define itself, rather than a core user motivation inherent in Quora as a concept?
Tim – Rereading the post, as well as great comments and Brian Solis’ piece http://www.briansolis.com/2011/01/picture-this-when-consumers-have-questions-do-brands-have-answers/ I can’t help but thinking about the relationship between social networks and how you felt in high school, grammar school or wherever you felt the nerdiest or most left out.
The issue I have with Quora is that is seems to have gone out of its way from the beginning to create a hierarchical structure populated by the cool kids, jocks and cheerleaders. The more I engage with that structure the more I realize I’m uninterested in re-living high school again.
Instagram, to your point, is about delight and sharing. It frustrates me at times with the lack of additional tools to make the photograph “better”, but then again it’s really not about better, is it?
Interesting comparison. Agree that Quora should have been built by Twitter and Instagram by Flickr. The number of social networks is quickly growing; there are many. The sharing on Instagram is quite different from that on Quora. It encourages us to notice the beauty of the everyday whereas Quora displays everyday conversations. They both will become more interesting as brands utilize them.
@clweinfeld
The Instagram story … at Quora
http://www.quora.com/Instagram/What-is-the-story-behind-Instagram
Hi Tim,
I agree about Quora it is very male dominated but I don’t think it’s for the reason Jess mentions.
The ironic thing is, Instagram shows exactly the same patterns if you look closely.
Check out the Popular photos, at any time of any day there will always be a picture of a girls face/body made popular because of guys liking and commenting.
I’m looking at one picture of a girls face on Instagram right now and here’s a few sample comments on the pic from guys.
“Fit”
“Marry me!!”
“Nice Skin!!”
“How old are you”
“Beautiful!”
“You Beautiful”
And there’s a picture of a girls cleverage which has made the popular page right now. Nice.Some guys don’t beat around the bush with their comments
“I want to have sex with you”
Check it for yourself, the next face, stomach, chest, bum shot that makes it to the Popular page will always be there because the majority of votes come from men.
We’re not hard creatures to figure out, so maybe Instagram is from Mars too?
I’d follow on from what Mutlu82 says. Each of these services fulfils a role for its audience.
But at least Quora’s self-regulation ensures that its community has a better chance of filtering out “the noise of the millions of morons” as Tim puts it. As Mutlu82’s comment shows, it’s harder to do that on Instagram.
Yes Quora is filled with people who’ve got something to say and take pride in articulating it (most of them anyway). I don’t think the site should be criticized for that. And they’ve got something to say that you can’t say with just a pretty picture…
I’m too intimidated even to post an answer on Quora. But I’m loving Instagram, and here are a few unresolved thoughtlets:
It was lovely to use Instagram over the Christmas holidays, its ‘sharing lovely moments/things’ proposition really came into its own in the season of goodwill.
The people I follow on Instagram are a subset of the people I follow on Twitter. The ones who a) I genuinely like and b) are creative and positive. Interesting some who tweet little Instagram a lot, and vice versa.
Instagram (for me at least) then achieves the ‘less than 50’ ‘exclusive social network’ idea that Path shout about, without needing to shout about it.
There’s something nice about Instagram only being on the phone, not having a desktop web interface. It makes it feel intimate, and I like that they’re not doing ‘everything everywhere’ just because they could; it feels conscious. (I love the Kindle for similar reasons.) Sadly, I think they’re going to change this. Boo.
I never visit the ‘popular’ page on Instagram; I just don’t use it in that way. I’m not interested in how awesome a stranger’s photography is (that’s what Flickr’s for). I’m interested in interesting/lovely/poignant/cryptic representations of moments in the lives of people I know.
Is there anything intrinsically lovely about Instagram, or is it just the people on it currently (or the people I’m following currently)? @corinnajaensch just sent me this PSFK post (http://bit.ly/f8BRbL) where Levis in Brasil are starting to use Instagram. What next after brands, Instagram porn (if it doesn’t already exist)? Perhaps Instagram will become polluted and cynical when more people get onto it. Or perhaps there’s something inherently intimate and positive about largely unexplained beautiful images?
I wonder if some Quora super-users feel intimidated about posting on Instagram, for the same reasons I feel intimidated about posting on Quora – fear of looking stupid? A left-brain/right-brain thing?
I’ll stop there.
@MUTLU82 – God that sounds awful. I just haven’t encountered that kind of behaviour. I think it’s because I am keeping my follows quite tight. For me, it’s not even as blurred as Twitter, which is about work + real life. I feel like Instagram is a ‘real life’ app, and although there are people there who I may have met on Twitter because of work the context is totally ‘real life’.
I haven’t seen any of that offensive stuff because, presumably, I don’t follow anyone who is offensive? I know far more women on Instagram – not least the awesome @stellawongo, @thaz, @hazeliz @ohrworm, @doctorblogs and of course not forgetting Mrs Malbon @cmalbon…
@DAN WEINGROD – Were you and me at the same school Dan?
@GLYNDOT Hi Glyn. I completely agree with your points on intimacy and mobile, and the ‘popular’ view (I don’t ever bother with that either). Brands are definitely using it, but remember – like Satan and Dracula, you have to invite them in.
I have also come across a porn account Glyn – a bit classy: Playboy
Get in!
@THE_PIED_PIPES Hi there. I think Quora will be really useful – mainly for work. But for me, not at all for hanging out in real life mode.
I think the word ‘morons’ was a little unwise. I didn’t really mean hat. Just said it to effect…
@Tim
I use it a slightly different way because my mates don’t really about Instagram even though many have iPhones.. Out of 180 FB friends only 7 use it. (110 have iPhones)
So if I want to find people who take good photos I naturally head to the Popular page regularly to Like and Follow. Just like ‘Most Interesting’ on Flickr. I’m there to see great photography, doesn’t matter who takes it.
That means I’m kinda lacking the personal connection that you have with it (reminds me a bit of how I use Twitter compared with how I use Facebook). Which is where services like Path step in that can be just about your mates.
But the comments and behaviour – It’s not necessarily offensive, just..well, a bit lame. Here’s one screen grab I took from the popular page just now.
http://imageupload.org?d=1bf828c94560078c383ddfae30656c4e
It’s still one of my favourite apps, loads of fun.
This app we created – quotagram.com – shows one approach to mating the Venus Instagram approach with the Martian world of words.