Quora.com is the latest buzz in an industry that is all about buzz. Everyone’s talking about the Q&A site, including community and social media managers – who are always looking to strike oil in an emerging platform. I took a stab at it, and I’m impressed.

Which surprised me, because I don’t care about Q&A sites. Well, I didn’t.

Yahoo Answers is more fun to troll than it is to use. Formspring is very popular, thanks to its emphasis on blog and Twitter integration, but to me, it always looked like an ego stroker rather than an actual tool. Wiki Answers is just… a mess.

When I signed up for Quora, two things happened that immediately communicated what the site is about. This is the holy grail of design: for your users’ first experience with the product to tell them exactly why it’s useful.

Show, Don’t Tell

First up: when you log into Quora after making an account, the question promoted to the top of your home page is “How do I get started using Quora?”

This elegant introduction is the most valuable kind of tutorial. You learn how to use the product by using it, rather than through a separate “lesson,” video, or About page. The first question has everything Quora’s social mechanics are built on: following, voting, and suggesting.

Compare that to Wiki Answers, which overwhelms you with posts (my home page had the gem “How much formula 8 lb baby“), and thrusts the “ask a question” bar in your face with no explanation.

What is that? What’s the difference between “All Sources,” “Community Q&A,” and “Reference Topics?”

Assume nobody will ever read your “About” page, and that everyone will skip your tutorial. Show them, don’t tell them.

Then the ground shook

Ok, so I got how Quora worked. You could follow people. You could vote up answers. You could subscribe, filter and tag. But why should I care?

That’s when my desk neighbor turned to me and asked, “Hey, did you just feel an Earthquake?”

I hadn’t – I’m a Texas boy, and would have jumped out the window at the first sign of the floor moving. (Perhaps not an advisable earthquake survival strategy.) I turned to Twitter, XKCD-style, and only saw tweets consisting of “Earthquake!!!” and “Woah, did anyone else feel that?” I turned to Facebook, and saw similar claims.

I refreshed Quora, and at the very top of my feed was the question: Was there an earthquake in the SF Bay Area the afternoon of January 7, 2011? The first answer had links to the official USGS earthquake tracking service, details on the location and severity, a Google Maps screenshot of the epicenters, and a collection of reports from Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose, San Mateo and San Francisco.

Quora is significantly better than Facebook at predicting what questions interest me. At the time of the earthquake, Facebook’s suggested questions for me were “What’s a good place to take a sewing class in SF?”, “What are your favorite Restaurants in Redwood City?”, and “Why do have nipples?”

Maybe it was luck, but I’m impressed. Quora immediately demonstrated its value, and now I’m eagerly exploring other ways it can be useful.

On a completely unrelated note, feel free to follow me on Quora. I’m currently exploring the Community Management, Social Media and Video Gaming sections, and I’m sure I’ll venture into more.

It’s been an exciting couple of weeks for me. I recently landed a gig as an online community manager for a prominent social gaming company. More on that later, but the short version has me living in San Francisco and kick-starting an exciting new career. Good times!

As a result of this long job hunt, I’ve been through a lot of job interviews. Some good, some bad. With the economy as rough as it is, and considering how competitive both the video game and social media industries can be, even a great interview often ends with “good luck in your search.”

But this post isn’t about how to land any community manager job (check out Blaise’s fantastic article for help on that front.) It’s about how to figure out if that specific position is right for you.

Nearly all interviewers will end with “So, do you have any questions for me?” Once you’ve finished impressing them with your savvy, well-informed questions about their products and company history, make sure you ask:

Where does the online community manager sit?

Will you be sitting with the engineers, the marketing team, or the customer support team? Or another team entirely? Because of the jack-of-all-trades nature of community management, and because many companies are hiring one for the first time, every organization has a different view on the CM’s role. The physical place that you sit gives you a great snapshot of what your primary tasks will be.

If you’re sitting with the engineers, your primary task is probably to engage with your members and relay bugs that the community finds. With marketing, you’ll be more focused on blogger outreach, social media and community involvement. Of course, you’ll probably be doing all of this regardless, just in different proportions.

The good news is, community management is such an encompassing role that once you get in the door, you can mold it into your ideal mix of abilities. All you have to do is be awesome at it.

Find out where your chair is, and you’ll learn a lot more than if you asked “so tell me about the position.”

Today, 4-16-10, is Foursquare Day. Rejoice, Foursquare users! (Foursquarers? Foursquares? Foursies?) Finally, you have a day of celebration where you can attend parties filled with Foursquare users. And earn a special badge. Also, you can check in to places. And stuff.

If you’re neither a Foursquare user nor a social media news junkie, you probably have no idea what that means. In fact, to the non-koolaid-drinker, the idea of a Global Social Media Holiday is exactly the kind of self-indulgent narcissism that is “wrong” with Social Media. Can you do that? Can you just… declare a holiday? And then get thousands of people to celebrate it?

Yep. You can now. And for online communities it’s really, really smart.

According to the official Foursquare Day website, here’s how it started:

Nate [Bonilla-Warford] is amused by simple number relationships like squares and primes and he makes a big deal about Pi Day each year. The thought struck him that since four-squared equals 16, it would be great to check into Foursquare on the 4^th 16^th of the year, otherwise known as 4 / 16 or April 16^th.

Nate floated the idea on Foursquare’s Getsatisfaction.com forum on March 12, 36 days before April 16th. An entire week passed with no activity before Kenneth Glanton suggested a Foursquare Day badge. He shared the idea with many of his friends on Twitter. Prompted by Ken’s enthusiasm and the recent excitement over Foursquare’s success at SXSW, Nate wrote up the Foursquare Day proposal and started a Facebook event on March 22, with 25 days left.

Nate then joined forces with Laura Petrolino and Jessica Barnet, which led to the creation of a Facebook Fan Page, multiple blog posts, and an official Foursquare Day Twitter account.

The idea took off. Users are hosting over 150 events all over the world today. Users. Not Foursquare. The Foursquare users. Foursquare Day is grassroots community building at its finest.

This is different than a corporation hosting hundreds of mini events. With social media, average users now have the ability to coordinate a network of simultaneous events. An influential blogger will suggest an idea, that idea gets put in motion, and then hundreds of people around the country think “wow, that sounds fun” and duplicate it.

For another example, look at mommy bloggers. Mom’s Nite Out started in similar fashion, with influential blogger Maria Bailey suggesting a national “night off” for moms to get together and have fun.

From the official Mom’s Nite Out website:

The National Mom’s Nite Out is the first nationally organized celebration of motherhood Intended to bring together today’s moms, physically and virtually, The National Mom’s Nite Out will unite over 150 social media groups, companies, local playgroups, mommy bloggers and mother social networks in giving moms a well deserved night off.

It worked. Hundreds of events popped up around the country. Power members among the mommy blogger community took it upon themselves to host them. “Hey, is anything going on in New York City? No? Ok, I’ll host one!” This led to a trickle down effect as more bloggers and readers followed suit.

Live events have a dramatic effect on your online community. When your users are the ones empowered to host live events for like-minded people, it multiplies that effect exponentially. They create a positive feedback loop, not only by instilling a strong sense of camraderie, but also by exposing your community to non-members in a fun and interesting way. How many people who don’t watch football attend Super Bowl parties?

This is exactly the kind of emergent behavior that Foursquare needs to target in order to melt faces.

Viral live events have a profound impact on gaming communities, too. Just look at any video game that has a robust grassroots tournament scene. Almost always, these tournaments developed in the living rooms of average gamers. They invited others to play, who in turn invited others to play, and so on until suddenly you have 6-figure prizes and rockstar professional gamers.

The lesson: powerful viral growth happens offline.

We’ve been experimenting with using Twitter at live game tournaments. Already it’s proved extremely useful for delivering match results which, coupled with Livestreaming, bring real-time updates of your event to those not in attendance. Several corporate tournaments use Twitter to fantastic effect – for instance, Magic: The Gathering’s live event coverage is a thing of sheer beauty. But while the big players in eSports have adopted Twitter, grassroots tournaments have not. To help, here are 5 ways to instantly improve your Twitter feed during a live event.

Aside: for this article, let’s say we’re hosting an aptly-named Super Smash Bros. tournament called the “Best Official Awesome Smash Tournament,” or BOAST.

Hosting an event entirely unrelated to grassroots gamingt? These practices still help! This is the best way I’ve found to organize a complex, constantly-updated Twitter stream for events that need to disseminate lots of information quickly. The goal is to create a feed that immerses your Twitter followers while also engaging your event attendees.

1) Use consistent formatting when reporting results.

Keep things clear and consistent in your results. You can add more tweets to pump up excitement, but the results needs to be as easy to read as possible. Include the screen name and a clear verb. You can always add another Tweet (perhaps on your primary account – more on that later) designed to stoke a frenzy about an upset. But when reporting results, keep it clear and consistent, in the same format every time.

• Bad: “OMG Logic got beat. DrDrew is too good!”
• Good: “DrDrew beats Logic”

Decide your verbs in advance. “DrDrew beats Logic” means something different than “DrDrew eliminates Logic”. In a double elimination bracket, you’ll be using both. “Beats” when talking about the Winners Bracket, and “Eliminates” when talking about the Losers Bracket.

Results will be coming at you fast, so don’t get bogged down in too much information. When streaming tournament results, all you need is Noun Verbs Noun.

If you’re using Twitter to announce active matches, provide all the necessary information for people to watch it. If it’s on a livestream, include the link. If not, include the station where they are playing.

But wait! Results? Announcements? Livestream links? How do you keep all of this crazy information organized?

2) Use #hashtags to organize your content

During your live event, hashtags serve two functions: to label your content for quick scanning, and to organize your feed. If someone is only interested in 1v1 results, they can search for it. Also, followers will know at a glance whether your update is a player interview or a livestream announcement.

• Bad: DrDrew is playing Logic on the livestream!
• Good: Now streaming: DrDrew vs Logic! #Livestream http://bit.ly/link

Keep your hashtags short and simple. #1v1, #2v2, etc. The longer the hashtag, the less room you have for the announcement – and even less for retweeting.

Hashtags are especially handy if you’re running more than one tournament at a time. They allow your followers to filter your content based on what game is being played.

Hashtags to consider:

• Tournament format – #1v1, #2v2, #CTF
• Game name – #Smash, #SF4, #Tek, #WoW, #Halo (remember: shorter is better!)
• Content type – #LiveStream, #Live, #Stream, #Podcast, #Interview, #News, #Nowplaying

Then, select an official hashtag for your event. Tell all of your followers and attendees about this hashtag, and encourage them to use it while tweeting. For our sample tournament, we’ll use #BOAST.

The official hashtag encourages engagement both with your attendees and your followers. Make sure you retweet great comments that use your hashtag. Promoting your followers is a good thing! And, it further builds buzz about your event.

Bonus Tip: Brightkite Wall lets you create a live “wall” of filtered Twitter results. Set it to full screen and hook your computer up to a TV/projector, and you have a live, real-time display of your Twitter account and #event hashtag. You can use it as a display board for what’s going on (creating a live brochure), or as a way to encourage everyone at the event to participate in the Twitter stream.

3) Respond to and retweet people that are talking about your event

I mentioned this earlier, but it bears repeating. If someone at the event tweets “Big name player is playing other big name player!”, retweet them. If someone NOT at your event tweets how excited they are, or if they just saw something cool on your livestream, point it out.

Of course, follow good retweeting practices.

When applicable, add a hashtag or link that explains what they are discussing.

The primary purpose of your livetweeting is to provide a service for your followers. But, this is Twitter. Even on event day you want to be promoting yourself, followers and conversations. Get people to join in, and then reward them.

4) Make an Event-Day Twitter Plan

Don’t just go into The Big Day with the intent to tweet the hell out of it. Figure out what information is most valuable to your followers. Are you targeting the people at your event? Or are you targeting everyone NOT at your event? (Hint: you should be doing both.)

Your Twitter stream serves two purposes: for people at home to know what’s going on (and spread the word – “Hey, check out the live stream!”), and as a live program guide for those in attendance to figure out what to do next.

Keeping a live Twitter up-to-date is constant work. If you’re flush with volunteers, make sure you have enough social media help. And, make sure they know what to do.

Do not assign Twitter duties to the poor soul running your bracket software! Ideally, you’ll have someone with enough availability to be constantly feeding links, results and updates. If not, you’ll have to spread responsibility around.

This means you need to have a concrete plan, and you need to communicate that plan to your volunteers. Are they expected to post live results as they come in? In what format? Do they know about your hashtags? Will your venue have internet, or are you updating via cellphone?

And finally, are all of your social media assets, such as your Facebook page and Justin.TV account, integrated with Twitter?

5) Create an alternate Twitter account for live events.

People don’t like spammed-up Twitter feeds. No, you’re not splitting your market. You’re not cannibalizing your followers. If you have marketed your event’s Twitter to provide news, updates, contests and conversations, then you probably have a lot of followers interested only in the occasional update. On the day of your event, when you’re spamming 30 updates an hour, they will unfollow you. Fast.

Create a new account, and keep it on brand. In our example, we have twitter accounts “@BOAST” and “@BOAST_Live”.

Promote the new account beforehand. Make sure all of your followers and attendees know about it. If you’re creating a landing page, the live account is the one you attach to it.

Don’t neglect your primary account! Crosspost your biggest news there. Remind your followers that you’re hosting a kick-ass tournament that day. Say “Hey, follow @BOAST_live for live updates from BOAST!”

Good luck

It’s a beast to keep up with, but once you train your team and put in the preparation, you’ll have a fantastic compliment to your livestreams, liveblogs, Flickr pools and other social media assets.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article up about Foursquare. Only it’s not about what Foursquare’s creators designed it for.

College students at University of Texas are tagging their campus with jokes, tips and gags. Not “tips” as in “I checked in on Foursquare and then left a tip.” No, students are leaving behind tags marking “the teacher they loathed,” “the room they smoked pot in,” and “the couch they had sex on.”

Awesome. Now THAT’S how you build an online grassroots community.

This is the kind of emergence that separates a Plurk from Twitter. Friendster from Facebook. Google Video from YouTube. To truly grow an online community, you have to get lucky and have one of these emergent lightning strikes. You have to encourage your community to use your product in a way you had NO IDEA existed.

If you’re really lucky, this emergent behavior will be self-replicating. For instance, “retweeting” and “follow friday”, had nothing to do with Twitter. They were created by the users. The exceptional part is how retweeting and follow friday reproduce themselves. If someone #Followfridays you, you are exposed to the trend. You then #Followfriday someone else. Other people see you tweet the tag. They do it to. It spreads faster than an chain email from your mom.

In the gaming space, World of Warcraft was amazing at promoting memes in its community. Blizzard did this by giving their massive player base a central place to talk – the Official WoW Forums – and making sure their customer service reps (Blues) allowed these memes to unfold. Want an example? Let’s melt some faces.

So there’s your answer, Foursquare. Give students easy ways to deface their colleges.