Facebook had a very similar product launch in 2010 called "Questions." It not only distributed to your friends, but actually used graph data to surface to niche experts in the space of the question (similar to quora). That product flopped around for about a couple years before it was killed due to lack of valuable engagement.
I agree with what Biz is saying - "knowledge is very different from information." But I think the problem is that a lot of information already has knowledge layered on top of it in the form of indexed and searchable web objects, so for mundane questions like the example used, encouraging people to share the answer instead of retrieving it from an existing source is just wasted energy.
Steven Pressfield's 'The War of Art' helped me view my own work in a new light and get shit done by removing my ego from the outcome. It's very complimentary to modern startup ethos in that it is better to focus on the art of production than to become mired in the outcome of one attempt.
When this took place, they also herded everyone through a "convert your interests to likes" flow so that you had to actually confirm the new likes, rather than just convert it for you.
I agree with what Biz is saying - "knowledge is very different from information." But I think the problem is that a lot of information already has knowledge layered on top of it in the form of indexed and searchable web objects, so for mundane questions like the example used, encouraging people to share the answer instead of retrieving it from an existing source is just wasted energy.