I discovered the Q&A web service Quora just yesterday and I'm late as a Santa in June.
I got immediately sucked in, thanks to its pretty clean interface and the relevance of the questions.

One of the first questions I answered was :
Will Quora become the next big thing here in Indonesia, or will it become just like another Formspring.me?

My answer is there,  and you can check it out. But here I wish to develop further on why Quora, if not the next big thing, could be right on time to get an established user base in Indonesia, and why this could be a win-win situation.

Why it can work

Indonesians are not afraid of asking.
You can say the opposite all you want, but I find Indonesians much more prone to asking things than, for instance, my fellow French.
Ranging from "Is time travel possible" to "What did you have for lunch" (oh dreaded question), I've seen all sort of questions flying my way, witnessed many debates, and it convinced me that knowledge thirst is real in Indonesia.

Indonesian culture is about sharing.
Well, probably not just sharing, that would be reductive, but for a huge part of it, it is.
On Quora, the sharing/networking features are spot on, not too much, not too little, with a link to Facebook and Twitter that really works.

Just a niche?

Quora is what it is, a Q&A service.
You won't share everything there, no photo album, no marketplace, no emotional status about your hamster's last failed relationship.
In other word: not much small talks, and it's precisely that small talk aspect that propelled Twitter and Facebook on the top of Indonesia's internet usage.

Quora's penetration in the Indonesian market will also be slowed down by its lack of mobile app.
Yes, mobile broadband is huge there, with a penetration rate of nearly 77% in march 2010 (latest number I'm aware of).

English is compulsory. Too bad.
Many local Facebook and Twitter users communicate in their native language. Indonesian is the second language in Twitter's trending topics (or was last time I checked). This is not, of course, exclusive to Indonesia and is also particularly true for China, Japan and Brazil.

These three facts make the service more restrictive than the more comprehensive Facebook or the faster Twitter, and more likely to attract a crew of active hobbyists and professionals rather than the average internet users.

Why a win-win?

A win for Quora if they manage to keep on attracting local users: The Indonesian user base will be active, dynamic and very versatile, and bring to the site a steady flow of interesting questions about many topics.

A win for Indonesia, as they have a very active entrepreneurial scene, especially in the new technologies and social media field. Quora could be just the right tool to let them show their real potential to the world while getting even more in touch with the tech trends.