What is Quora?
"Quora is a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it." - Source

Why Should You Use Quora?

• Accumulate knowledge.
• Share your experience.
• Collaborate

How to Use Quora?

• Follow topics that interest you.
• Browse questions that interest you.
• Connect with your existing friends.
• Check out the Quora F.A.Q. for New Users

Quora seems to be the hot new toy in town and it will be interesting to see how it does over time.

"To really see if this is the service that will explode, we’ll need to watch how it shapes the SXSW experience, a conference I use as a bell weather for next-generation technologies" - Jeremiah Owyang

Only one way to find out if this site is going to stick around...try it out yourself.

An excellent article entitled "Old Media Beware: Blogs Rely on Cleverer Tech, Leverage Social Media, Making Bloggers More Money" provides some great insight into the current state of the blogosphere.

"bloggers themselves feel their work is having an increasing impact on the world. The greatest impact will be felt in politics, technology, and business..."

Take note that these findings highlight these three key sectors as being areas with significant leverage and unique opportunities facing bloggers. Great news for those who specialize in niche business areas such as public relations, social media, and of course, content marketing.

"One message is very clear: The traditional media should realize blogging, as the prime example of what's dubbed "new media," is a measurably more serious threat to its dominance in the publishing business."

Bloggers and content creators are indeed a force to be reckoned with.

Findings are based on Technorati's State of the Blogosphere 2010.

Communication is an integral component of building rewarding relationships. Paul Ford, a Project Manager for Digital Marketing agencies in London, provides us with some keen insight into the communication arena and context of shared meaning.

If communication is to involve shared meaning, five principles must exist to create variables to the context of communication. These are: transaction; interaction; irreversible and unrepeatable; culture-specific; and content and relationships.

1. Communication is a transactional process: a transaction is a business or activity that is carried through to settlement. It is a continuous process where elements are constantly changing. Sometimes, it can appear to be going around in circles. During conversation, each party requires a response after talking, and the conversation only exists as long as these transactions take place.

2. Communication is an interactional process: interaction must occur for communication to exist. Interaction can also include no interaction. If the second party does not respond to the first party’s statement, interaction has still taken place. There may be several meanings to this. The second party may not have heard the first party, or the second party may be deliberately not answering. Further transactions are required to establish the meaning of the initial interaction.

3. Communication is an irreversible and unrepeatable process: every communication is a unique event. It can be repeated later, but not exactly. Some elements will change, possibly voice tone, volume or expression. An actor might repeat the same lines in a play for many years, but some performances will stand out more than others. In that case, the actor’s attitude and mood on any given night can affect the communication. The performance of the other actors will also be an important element that is constantly changing every time the play is performed.

4. Communication is a culture-specific process: different cultures interpret the same communication message in different ways. In some cultures, it is considered inappropriate to look into someone’s eyes when speaking with them, whereas in other cultures it is considered to be a sign of openness and honesty. A hand gesture that is a sign of approval in one culture, may be an insult in another culture.

5. Communication is about content and relationships: messages in communication may have multiple meanings. Both the spoken word and the written word can have hidden meanings. This is sometimes referred to as “reading between the lines”. The relationship between the people communicating can alter the shared meaning. The words “I love you” spoken between two lovers has a different meaning than if spoken between a parent and a child.

Source: http://paulford.com/shared-meaning-and-the-communication-process/

RESTON, VA, July 13, 2010 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its monthly comScore qSearch analysis of the U.S. search marketplace. In June 2010, Americans conducted 16.4 billion core searches, up 3 percent vs. May.

Here are some additional highlights of the report:

Google Sites led the U.S. core search market in June with 62.6 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites (up 0.6 percentage points to 18.9 percent), and Microsoft Sites (up 0.6 percentage points to 12.7 percent).

Americans conducted 16.4 billion searches in June, up 3 percent from May. Google Sites accounted for 10.3 billion searches (up 1 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 3.1 billion (up 7 percent), Microsoft Sites with 2.1 billion (up 8 percent), Ask Network with 584 million (up 1 percent), and AOL LLC with 368 million (up 2 percent).

For the full search enginge rankings report.

Source: (comScore)