Even Scoble agrees with me that Quora is all hype!

On Thursday, I wrote a blog about how I was amazed at the amount of hype Quora was receiving.

One of the main perpetrators of this hype has been tech blogger extraordinare, Robert Scoble.

A month ago, he was full of praise for the service:

“Thanks Quora for providing a great community and way for people to communicate about what’s interesting in their lives in a new way. That’s innovation in blogging.”

And yet, today we get this:

“Turns out I was totally wrong [about it being a good service for blogging]. It’s a horrid service for blogging, where you want to put some personality into answers. It’s just fine for a QA site, but we already have lots of those and, in fact, the competitors in this space are starting to react… Even worse, I’m getting dozens of emails from people pissed that their questions have been changed, their answers marked “not helpful,” or that they got kicked off the service altogether. Admittedly one of the things I really love about the service is there is very little, if any, spam and everyone is forced to use their real name, but lots of people want to talk about their business or not use their real names.”

Hyperventilating nerds

Scoble is part of the problem. He is the embodiment of the problems the technology industry (and the media) has when it comes to overhyping the latest thing.

Those of us who class ourselves as geeks are always running around hypervenilating over the next ‘new thing’. If you’ve seen any of Scoble’s videos with new tech CEOs you’ll know what I mean. The sycophantic idol-worship he emits as he runs around demoing every new piece of software like a hamster on steroids is quite laughable really.

To be fair to Scoble, he’s pretty honest when he’s made a mistake and judged something unfairly as this post shows

And maybe we need people like Scoble. He pushes things into the limelight for the crowd to decide. Some succeed, most fail.

Services like Quora become victims of their own hype (or Scoble and Techcrunch’s hype). Victims of their own PR.

All PR isn’t good PR

Is this a bad thing? Maybe services like Quora that try very hard are just never deemed to succeed, or at least not on the scale some might think. They won’t be the next Twitter or Facebook or Google, but then the vast majority of businesses never will be.

In the comments in Scoble’s piece, some are comparing Quora to Digg. The latter is a service that, although has often promised much, it never reached the heights some predicted. Instead it is a pleasure ground for geeks. Not that this is a bad thing. Digg is a very successful operation with a healthy revenue stream. Quora could do worse.

The wisdom of the crowd

At the end of the day, the wisdom of the crowd will prevail.

While some of us geeks would love everything we see to become super brilliant, with Scoble at the front as some larger than life cheerleader, most of them never will.

The market and the crowd will always decide.

And that’s what makes this roulette wheel of the tech start up world so utterly addictive!

picture credit

Goodnight NightJack

There’s lots of digital news going on today and so it would be easy to miss a blogging story that should really be given more attention. The Times has reported that it has won a landmark verdict in the High Court allowing the paper to reveal the identity of police-blogger NightJack.

The verdict has forced the blogger to close the site and delete the content.

The NightJack blog describes described, worts and all, on-the-beat policing, featuring some stinging attacks on the organisation and the government. But it was the insights into everyday policing that lead the blog and the blogger to be awarded an Orwell Prize in April. As a Guardian editorial put it:

“This is life as the police see it. Read it, even if only to disagree.”

Well, disagree The Times did and reporting on the case it disclosed:

“In the first case dealing with the privacy of internet bloggers, the judge ruled that Mr xx had no “reasonable expectation” to anonymity because “blogging is essentially a public rather than a private activity”.”

Blogger Zoe Margolis who was also unmasked by the same newspaper blogs:

“There will be others, of course, who’ll applaud this judge’s ruling for upholding “freedom of information” and “openness and transparency” for the “public interest” stories covered by journalists.  But those of us who have chosen to be anonymous online, have done so with good reason; so after losing my own anonymity, and experiencing first hand the ruthless behaviour of some elements of the press, I will continue to fight for the right of other bloggers to keep their identity hidden.”

For some anonymity empowers them to say and expose things they might not otherwise say or expose, as Jemima Kiss states, “there are occasions when anonymity is a powerful and necessary tool and a right that protects whistleblowers and brings important issues to light. A blanket ruling that disregards that right is very bad news indeed.”

I’m not au fait with the political and legal ranglings of the case but I do know that at a time when bloggers are exposing great injustices in the world, it is sometimes necessary to write behind a veil in order to reveal what is really happening.

About

This is my story. I've always been fascinated by the internet. My first passion was music and I studied a music degree at Birmingham University. But once graduated I quickly went back to the web working as a digital marketer. I also ran a web startup for a few years. In the need of a new challenge, I turned to the world of PR and now work as an Account Director at EML Wildfire. My interest is primarily looking at how PR professionals can make the most of the web and digital marketing. This blog contains my thoughts and things I find inspirational.

© 2012 Danny Whatmough - Made by me