Blog vs YouTube comments vs Twitter vs Quora vs Reddit

I think we should look at the voice. YouTube comments are a spur-of-the-moment kind of voice, whereas a blog is a more thoughtful one. Both can tell you something, but they are useful for different kinds of questions. A YouTube comment is a conversation in the bar, whereas a blog is a reflection of your considered view.

YouTube comments can be great because you get to hear what people are saying. You get the human pulse.

But if you are trying to answer a difficult life question, I think the requirement changes. If you are asking whether a master’s in finance is worth it now in the current climate of AI, I don’t think YouTube comments would be particularly helpful. That is a difficult life question.

For something like that, I think a blog becomes more interesting. Someone has sat down and written something longer. There is some thinking behind how that person has arrived at the conclusion.

I would not necessarily make an important life decision on the basis of a conversation in the bar. The kind of human voice you need therefore depends on the kind of question you are asking.

Twitter has another problem. If I go to Twitter, people’s comments are influenced by their popularity. Twitter therefore isn’t going to be a great format for your quick understanding of things.

A blog forces you to provide some conviction or some thinking pattern behind your conclusion. Twitter is conclusory remarks based on evidence which is not easily visible, or the thinking pattern is not fully understood. That is the Twitter problem.

On Twitter, you can say something controversial in 280 characters and leave without explanation. I think blogs are more reliable in that way.

The other problem with YouTube comments is the lack of identity. People do have profiles on YouTube, but we don’t generally go to their profiles. That is not how the workflow or the flow works.

You read a YouTube comment and you are there to absorb it on that same YouTube window or page rather than follow the person. The comment is what you are consuming rather than the identity of the person behind the comment.

So YouTube comments can be useful for understanding the human pulse, but you may still know very little about the person whose view you are reading.

Reddit is slightly different because you do have a profile page and you can connect with that person. They have posts, comments, reviews and other things attached to the profile. But it still feels like the person is very hidden because the face is missing and there is a small avatar.

It makes the comment a bit difficult to fully understand because you don’t completely know who the person is behind the comment. The lack of identity makes it a little like hearing someone’s opinion over a phone call versus doing it over video.

You might prefer to look at a person if you are trying to understand what their views are and perhaps a bit about their identity. A little bit of that can help you get a picture of where this person is coming from. I think that is what is missing on Reddit.

Quora is doing a better job in the sense that you get to see who the person is, what their profile is and what their background is. So you have a better sense of where their views are coming from.

But the problem with Quora is different. You may get an opinion, but my hunch is that the opinion you get is not necessarily a considered view. On Reddit, I think the communities are more serious, or the responses to the threads are more seriously put together, and perhaps the moderation is stronger. That is the hunch that I have.

Many times, the impression I get on Quora is that a question is asked and it is answered by someone you later discover, based on their profile, isn’t necessarily the best person to answer that question. That is the problem with Quora.

It is not the lack of visibility of the author. It is the sense of authority that you associate with their views.

I think Reddit gets a strange advantage from not showing the identity too much. You take the views more at face value and may feel, “Okay, you know what? Reddit is a respected forum, and therefore the view must be trustworthy.”

If the identity was much more visible, you might feel differently. Identity is an essential part of understanding what a view is all about, but revealing the identity may also change the way you judge the opinion.

A weak profile might make you feel, “Oh, I don’t think I found it very useful.” Whereas on Reddit, the same opinion with no significant profile attached to it may get pushed along by the reputation of Reddit and its moderation.

Take the same comment on Quora and Reddit. On Quora, you might see the comment together with an average profile of the person who wrote it. On Reddit, you might see essentially the same comment without a significant identity attached to it. You might actually believe the Reddit comment more because of the reputation of the forum. I find that fascinating.

My understanding is that a view becomes useful when there is a person behind it. That person should be visible to you. You should have some idea of where that person is coming from. That person should also have sufficient credentials to answer your question.

I don’t think that is sufficiently happening on either Reddit or Quora. Reddit may give the comment authority through the reputation of the forum while hiding much of the identity. Quora gives you more identity, but the identity itself may make you question the authority behind the view.

YouTube comments are like an offhand comment or a conversation in a bar. Twitter views appear to be coloured by the aspiration for attention. Reddit can give a largely anonymous view credibility through the reputation of the forum. Quora gives you more identity, but you may then question whether the person is really the right person to answer the question. A blog gives you a more considered view and also gives you a better opportunity to understand the person behind it.

I think there is a space for a platform which allows genuine human perspectives to flourish while retaining identity and removing the attention-seeking aspect attached to it. The person should be visible. You should have some idea of where that person is coming from. You should also have some reason to believe that their perspective is worth listening to.

That kind of platform appears to be not fully there. That is what Moka is trying to solve.