I had a bit of a rant on Twitter this morning.

It was prompted by a big multi-page feature in the lastest issue of PR Week on Quora. The headline asked whether this new network could become the “new Twitter” and included a range of comments from the great and the good of the online PR industry giving their thoughts on what it means for brands and PR strategies.

All well and good; Quora’s been getting a lot of attention recently.

It’s all just hot air

But, if we step back a bit and think about this objectively, it all suddenly becomes rather absurd.

Quora, despite having launched about a year ago, has only really been on most people’s radars for a few weeks maximum. And when I say “most people”, I mean the techy, social mediaites on Twitter. In terms of user numbers and general awareness, it is nowhere.

There is a real danger in the social media echo chamber in which many of us live our lives, that we gravitate towards the new and sparkly just because someone posts a blog post saying it might be a good thing.

As Vivek Wadhwa says:

“Silicon Valley is again drinking its own Kool-Aid; it is looking at the world through its own prism. This is a common problem here, where we jump from one fad to another; where venture capitalists start investing in similar technologies and drive company valuations through the roof; where TechCrunch hypes the technology du jour and causes entrepreneurs all over the world to drop what they are doing in favor of building copycat technologies.”

Now, I’m not saying we shouldn’t look at new things, play with them or keep half an eye on them. Of course, we should. I’m also not saying that Quora won’t be successful (though I do have reservations and agree with much of what is said in this New York Times review).

Second guessing the next big thing!

But, rather than just jumping on the bandwagon, we need carefully assess the service it in a responsible, considered way. It’s pretty telling that the most popular topic on Quora right now is social media! Go figure…

I think Adam Timworth gets it spot on when he says: “…my gut feeling…is that the Next Big Thing, whatever it turns out to be, won’t be this hyped. And Quora is really hyped right now. Every previous Next Big Thing, from blogging, through Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and more has gone through an extended period of quiet use by a small, but steadily growing pool of users and evangelists, before the real mainstream growth kicks in. I’ve never seen a major Next Big Thing on the web go from zero to hero in about 10 days.”

Most of the ‘big things’ in tech at the moment were game changers and I don’t think Quora is different enough from what has come before to allow it to have massive mainstream adoption.

So while I wish Quora well, I think those of us that are already dreaming up PR strategies around how it should/could be used need to give it time.

Jon Collins kindly emailed me with some of his thoughts:

“From a PR perspective, what’s needed more than an understanding of the latest, greatest thing, is a model/mechanism which can quickly evaluate the potential of all such tools. If Quora shines like a star for a week before it’s gone, for example, then the smart PR executive may be able to make the most of it. That is a very different mindset than, say, thinking ’do we need a Quora strategy’.”

Give it time

My advice to PRs looking at Quora? By all means look at it, play with it (as you should with all the new shiny tools that come alone), but don’t waste your or your clients time just yet time trying to work out how it might or might not influence what we do in the near or even distant future.

picture credit

Danny Whatmough