The premise behind Quora is so familiar that, at first glance, it almost gets dismissed as yet another me-too question and answer platform. Now, after its 2010 move from beta to public, Quora has proven to be far more than that.

At its most basic level, Quora lets users ask questions of all types to the community, as well as respond to other users' posts. The execution is a perfect example of taking an existing business idea and making it better. Much better, in fact. The site has taken all the utility of prominent social media tools and integrated them intuitively into a clean, no nonsense Q&A platform. In doing so, the service manages to check every box on a collaborative model that has been tried over and over with limited efficacy. Yahoo Answers only sorts questions by recency and popularity, ChaCha leaves you at the mercy of paid "guides," and LinkedIn, while not a bad place for professional questions, has a narrow focus and contributor base. The way it's laid out, Quora looks like Wikipedia with a sprinkle of Twitter. In short, it's different.

Here are some key features that make Quora work:

• Ability to follow questions, topics and people
• Ability to improve answers and track changes through edits
• Personal Quora inbox for direct messages between users
• Ability to refer a question to someone you know who has pertinent knowledge
• Ability to "Thank" a user for a helpful answer (even if you didn't ask the question)
• Statistics on each question, including views, monitors, and followers
• Connect through Facebook and Twitter

By connecting through Facebook, Quora uses profile information and interests to figure out what questions you might be interested in reading, or even answering. I tried it out, and found this to work surprisingly well. "What are the best secrets in Super Mario 64?" is actually a question I'm very well-equipped to answer. But wait, do I really want my questionably detailed knowledge about this game to be public? Good thing I can click the "Make Anonymous" button when I don't want my response logged on my Quora profile.

The site has been getting quite a bit of attention in the blogosphere, which is a promising . The beauty behind a platform like Quora is that the more popular it gets, the more in-depth knowledge there is available to those posting questions. As a user who usually types questions directly into Google and looks for the best match, I'm starting to think there is finally a better approach. Check it out, see what it's all about, and let us know what you think in the comments section.