Quora, the question and answer platform, is growing rapidly in terms of site visits (812, 245 unique visits), funding ($61 million), and valuation (about $400 million). The questions are crowdsourced and have the added credibility associated with answers that can be upvoted and downvoted.

The Quora community does an excellent job of honing in on valuable answers / contributors. If you find people that consistently provide quality content, you have the option of following that person (Ashton Kutcher has 13,992 followers).

Now that’s established, the question becomes who is benefiting from using Quora, and how is that platform unique compared to many of the other Q&As platforms, such as Yahoo! Answers and Wiki Answers.

We know that the average user is Male, between 18 to 35, and has a degree level education or better, with users accessing their Q&As predominantly from work (three pages at a time). I posit that a key differentiator is level of education which should not surprise avid Quora users. There are some high functioning folk on there.

It’s also noteworthy to look at the most followed topics: technology and startups (ruling the roost), science and to a lesser extent business, television and shopping–in that order. This is a go-to platform for many techies, including Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Case and Jimmy Wales.

Quora has a reputation as being a reliable source for startup / small business advice and information, keeners and nerds alike. It’s earned it, making it worth a whirl for many of my readers. Just remember to check the number of votes that each question received. As an added precaution, consider reviewing the profile of those associated with the most popular answers, and looking at follower count as keys indicators of credibility.