Under pressure to grow, Quora moves into the publishing blogs

"We have a marketing challenge because our content is actually pretty diverse," Bodnick said.

The company thinks there is no reason why it cannot be a thoughtful forum for discussing both the subtler points of software programming and, say, the comparative qualities of NBA big men or pop divas.

Compared to the site's early days, when it attracted mostly Silicon Valley digerati who discussed the Valley's work culture or startup financing, less than 10 percent of the site's answers today are written by users from California, Bodnick said, adding that film and food are also some of the most popular among the site's 300,000 discussion topics.

To showcase its variety, Quora recently published a hardcover collection of its best writing from the past two years. The volume included candid responses to questions ranging from "How do actors' spouses feel about love scenes in film and TV?" to "What does the first day of 5+ year prison sentence feel like?" to "If I want to look smart, what do I need to know about the Higgs Boson discovery?"

Bodnick argued that Quora should be enticing to would-be bloggers because it could direct a large number of readers to a single, well-written post almost instantly.

"After two years, we can now deliver audiences at scale," Bodnick said.