jasens: Is Quora A Sausage Fest?

Monday, March 21, 2011

Is Quora A Sausage Fest?

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Remember way back in college how, every couple weeks or so, some ambitious kid on your hall would buy lots of beer, lots of solo cups, and paper campus with fliers – only to throw a party attended by lots of dudes?

If so, you'll remember how long those parties usually lasted: Not long.

Perhaps crudely, we called those parties "sausage fests."

Does Quora have the same problem as those parties?

Every couple weeks, top Quora exec Marc Bodnick puts together a list of "Great New Users I've Discovered."

Usually, the list is ~90% male.

Another Quora user, Achilleas Vortselas, recently took stock of his own connections on the site and found that about 80% of the people he interacts with on the site are men.

He writes:

Of the people I'm following, there are 18/78 women (23%).
Of my followers, there are 54/259 women (21%).
On a list I made of people to follow* there are 14/77 women (18%).
Of all reviewers**, there are 16/82 women (19.5%).
Of all admins***, there are 10/27 women (37%).

Is Quora a sausagefest?

In a post on the issue, entreprenuer Jon Pincus points out that having an overly male community is one reason Digg never went anywhere.

Really, Quora's gender diversity problem is the same thing as its larger problem. Right now the site is very useful for a small elite group of Silicon Valley users.

If it's ever going to justify the billion dollar hype, it has to expand to "normals" – and the other half of the human race.

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