Whenever I start to see friends posting about joining a new website on Facebook or Twitter, I always begin to monitor the traffic patterns to for more widespread adoption. One good example is Quora.com, a much-talked about crowd sourced question and answer website, where visits have been steadily growing since the public launch in June 2010. The volume of visits nearly tripled in January due to considerable coverage from technology news websites like TechCrunch and CNET News.com.

Search has been the major driver of traffic of Quora over the past 6 months and accounted for nearly 49% of the visits last week. Social Networks like Facebook and Twitter have also been key as users can share their both their questions and answers among their networks.

Among the visitors to website, the top 5 Mosaic segments represented 42% of all visits to Quora for the 12 weeks ending February 5, 2011. The large share of the audience tends to be characterized by college-educated professionals, along with students poised to join those same segments following graduation. For example, the largest segment currently visiting Quora is Major University Towns, which is primarily made up of students and young adults under the age of 35. The Young Cosmopolitans segment is another strong one for Quora, which tends to be the early adopters typically among the first to discover new websites.