I'd love to know whether the (rather severe) spelling mistake in the domain / site name is on purpose (and even then... WHY?)
What is it with Quora? Its like.. not useful.. at all: clunky interface, lock-in of information, it is like Google Knol. Again. And yet the funding never stops and now Obama is on board too?
To be fair, despite all the negatives that you mention, it has a ton of interesting content and passionate contributors.
Much as I agree with you concerning the interface and lock-in, I do find myself on Quore quite often through their weekly(?) digest email, and every time I'm there I keep wanting to click around. So they're doing something right, even if just with the email (I usually never open newsletters).
Obama is going closer to his readers and as Quora is really popular, I assume it to be a really good PR move. And it's presumably free, so good to go.