Quora and Others Are Racing to Fill Gaps Left by Google - WSJ.com

Taking another run at human expertise/answering, this time with Facebook and Twitter as the underlying identity and social networking services

One of the hopefuls, Quora Inc., made its public launch Monday after months of private testing. The Palo Alto, Calif., company, co-founded by two early Facebook Inc. engineers, wants to collect and organize information people have in their heads but that may not be available online, such as background on the inner workings of a company and advice on how to get a reservation at an exclusive restaurant.

The service allows people to pose or answer questions—working behind the scenes to route questions to the users who can best answer them. People must use their real name on the site, and register by connecting their Quora accounts with a Facebook or Twitter account, which helps Quora connect them to people they know using the service.

Quora and Others Are Racing to Fill Gaps Left by Google - WSJ.com