Mr. Cheever (Photo: Quora)

Following the recent announcement that Quora cofounder Charlie Cheever will be taking a backseat role at the company, something of a revolution has begun to foment at the question and answer site so popular among the Valley's elite. For a platform which purports to embrace openness and honesty as its core ethos, its own staff has not been particularly forthcoming about Mr. Cheever's departure.

Social Times points out that a question about Mr. Cheever's status at the company was answered by Quora's other founder, Adam D'Angelo. Users immediately called Mr. D'Angelo out for his disingenuous reply, which was bathed in a thick coat of PR BS. One such indictment--posted by another startup founder--even garnered more upvotes than the original response.

Could Mr. Cheever's departure and the subsequent user backlash be a signal for what's ahead at Quora? Social Times kicks around a variety of theories about what's up at the startup, from a potentially imminent acquisition to flailing user adoption due to the site's inability to scale.

If you've spent any amount of time on Quora, the mean girling and cattiness becomes evident pretty quickly, and nothing turns off new users more than a powerful cabal of close-minded insiders. Doesn't anyone remember why Gawker initiated that whole commenting overhaul? Writes the Times:

Quora still exists primarily in its Silicon Valley echo chamber. The users who wield the most power seem intent on keeping it that way. Too often, once users outside that inner circle begin to make a mark — such as garnering deserved up votes too easily, or by questioning methodology and moderation — a backlash quickly ensues.  The less powerful users find themselves down voted to the point of having their answers collapsed into oblivion.  Then, they are aggressively pursued and forced to defend their subsequent contributions.

Social Times makes a convincing argument that Quora can't scale because it doesn't want to change the platform's negative dynamics, and in fact is working against the best interests of its own site. Upvotes to that.

Mr. Cheever (flickr.com/techrunch)

Those Facebookers are making it rain and the IPO isn't even scheduled until Friday. The Wall Street Journal reports today that ex-Facebookers Adam D'Angelo and Charlie Cheever have raised a new $50 million round of funding for their Q&A site Quora, led by--surprise!--Facebook board member Peter Thiel.

The news comes on the heels of a New York Times piece that chronicled the new "circle of tech:" collect payout, do a startup.

According to the Journal:

The investment is a sign of how the Facebook "mafia" is flourishing in Silicon Valley, helping to fuel new start-up activity....Mr. Heiliger said one of the key reasons he invested in Quora is because of his friendship with Mr. D'Angelo and Mr. Cheever when they all worked together at Facebook several years ago.

A source told us a few months ago that he didn't have high hopes for Quora, but the company is now apparently valued at $400M. Between this and Instagram, perhaps the Facebook mafia can catchup to PayPal yet.

Update: A source wrote in to tell us that Benchmark Capital also contributed to the round. Well, well.

To show you how easy it is to be Quora--or Ask Jeeves, or Facebook Questions, or Google Questions, or Allexperts.com--I’m starting my own question and answer site right here in this very column. If I’m half as lucky as Quora, I should get $150 million.

Why is anyone even paying attention to Quora, at all?

Excellent question. As part of the slavering press frenzy that accompanied Quora’s debut, co-founder Adam D’Angelo told some reporter that he quit Facebook to start Quora because “Q & A is one of those areas on the internet where there are a lot of sites, but no one had come along and built something that was really good yet.” And they still haven’t.

He also said, “We think there’s a lot of knowledge that is still in people’s heads that hasn’t really been written down on the internet in a useful format yet.” Totally.

People think it’s a good idea to care about Quora because question and answer sites are as fashionable right now as rompers were last summer. See, just like the romper,  Q & A sites inexplicably makes a comeback every few years. With Google flooded with spam and SEO nonsense, technophiles are thinking it’d actually be better if we farmed out our question-answering needs to “social networks” of humans. Much in the same way grown women periodically think it’s a good idea to dress themselves in one-piece outfits for two-year-olds, Q & A sites like Quora and Stack Exchange rear their ugly heads now and then.

Plus, just like Hashable, Quora capitalizes on the narcissism and incestuousness of tech start-up culture, generating outsize enthusiasm from a group of people who love nothing more than to hear their opinions and mutual adulations echo around whatever virtual forum happens to be popular at the moment.

That’s it?

Self-promoter Robert Scoble at one point was the site’s No. 1 user, but Quora got upset that he was using it as a personal branding vehicle (an odd objection, considering personal branding is one of the only reasons anyone has any incentive to answer dumb questions on Quora to begin with). Scoble got in a fight with Quora and eventually wrote a passive-aggressive fake mea culpa, and some people who read tech blogs paid attention to that.

Who runs Quora?

Charlie Cheever (my boss’s friend) and Adam D’Angelo, two ex-Facebook guys who decided to jump ship in hopes of making a buck off investors who are going crazy over tech companies. Sound familiar? It should.

How is Quora different from Yahoo! Answers?

Quora is not different from Yahoo! Answers.

How is Quora different from Stack Exchange?

Unlike Stack Exchange, Quora does not make a habit of weeding out poorly formed and illogical questions. (Stack Exchange’s Pokemon questions, for example, are very well thought out and pragmatic, whereas on Quora you get threads like “Who is the sexiest Pokemon?”)

Is Jeeves on Quora?

No, Quora has even less going for it than the ill-fated question and answer engine, because Quora does not even have a cartoon butler for a mascot.

How much is Quora worth?

Somewere between $86 million and $300 million, if you believe the deep-pocketed, glorified lottery players at Benchmark Capital. My valuation is closer to the $0 range, but my opinion doesn’t matter as much as that of venture investors making scattershot investments in hope of cashing in a winning start-up lottery ticket.

Why is this happening?

Mainly because what drives any American bull market is a group of wealthy and self-congratulatory -- but also ignorant -- people wasting their money on fashionable but ultimately worthless investments.

Should we grow up now?

Yes, grow up, you babies.