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!

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The Telegraph sacks Paul Carr and why blogging is great

A few months back, I blogged about how writer Paul Carr had been sacked by the Guardian due to freelancer budget cuts. At the time, I said:

“…it is yet another indictment of the decline of ‘traditional media’ and the power and rise of bloggers and media ‘personalities’ who don’t need a publishing house behind them to be successful. And that’s great for people like Carr. It’s harder though for less forthright journalists.”

And I was right. Carr is still writing his next book, publishing on his blog and has since secured two new columns. One with pro-blog Techcrunch and the other with the Telegraph.

The latter always seemed a weird fit, but it was good to see the Telegraph taking a few more risks (which it certainly was with Carr!). But then yesterday Carr announced – surprise, surprise – that the Telegraph has terminated his contract. The reason given by his boss:

“I’ve been looking at the latest traffic figures for your blog and also our budget and how we’re spending it. And I’m afraid I’ve reached the conclusion that your time blogging with us should come to an end… Our limited budget just cannot sustain these sums without a bigger bang for our buck.”

You can read the rest of Carr’s post to get his full (and colourful) reaction to his sacking. But it’s the reason given that is interesting to me. As Carr says:

“I short, I wasn’t driving enough pageviews to justify what they were paying me.”

Should we be surprised that this is potentially all that seems to matter for journalism now? Should we be concerned? These are after all commercial companies, with commercial concerns.

Perhaps this is why, for me, ‘personal’ blogging is becoming so important. By this I don’t mean Techcrunch or even Paul Carr. I mean the thousands that blog every now and then, even the millions that post on microblogs like Twitter. Those that share their thoughts and ideas.

They aren’t driven by page views or sensationalist headlines.  They aren’t ruled by the ‘media agenda’ or corporate, PR-speak.

This is why the democratisation of media is so important, especially considering the way more and more professional media outlets seem to be going. I hope the professional media stays strong and survives, I think it is vital. But I’m excited by the new brand of journalism just as much.

Are comment sections dead?

Does the sight of hundreds of pages of comments on an article fill you with dread? Do you get fed up of reading the same comment again and again and again?

I read an interesting article today on TechCrunch by Nicolas Holzapfel. Nicholas claims that comment sections have become unruly and rarely add anything particularly constructive to an article because of the way they are structured:

“Lots of comments amounts to an enormous long list of entirely unstructured text. There are no dividers or subheadings, no logical progression of arguments or groupings of opinion and no distinction between unique, intelligent insights and throwaway expressions of approval and opposition. Because nobody can be bothered to read through such a mess before they add their own comment, there isn’t even the structure of a coherent conversation. Instead, there is endless, pointless repetition; conversations emerge, peter out and then re-emerge 50 comments later with new participants who haven’t noticed that the same issues were discussed 50 comments ago.” (his emphasis)

And I largely agree with this. When you get mainstream articles with lots of comments, I will instinctively read the first few and then skim the rest. I will rarely go onto a second page and never to a third.

So what is the answer?

From the looks of things, Nicholas clearly believes that his startup – Yoomoot – will provide the solution, but it is hard to tell from the website exactly how or why!

I’m a fan of Disqus (used on this blog) and the service mentioned in the article – Echo, a real-time comment engine – also looks interesting. However, neither service really solves the specific problem Nicholas highlights.

Should comments be subjected to more editorial control? Should there be more social or Digg-style elements where visitors can vote up popular comments (the BBC website does this, for example)? Perhaps the eagerly anticipated Google Wave will help with more ‘Wiki’-like technology allowing visitors to manage and control comment sections in a more democratic way.

Surely this is an aspect of blogging that is ripe for innovation and fresh thinking?

How do you solve a problem like Spinvox?

I like to judge the issues of the day that are particularly relevant to me not by Twitter trending topics or the most read list on BBC.co.uk, but by the articles that crop up in my RSS reader. They are, after all sources I have hand-picked because they are likely to contain content that I find interesting.

And if these are indeed a fair reflection of what is and isn’t hot right now (in my world), then Spinvox is certainly winning at the moment. On both counts!

But, I can’t help being a little bit mystified by all the attention.

Yes, I know the service is one of the darlings of the Web 2.0 world and, here in the UK at least, has been promoted all over the Twitterverse by its social-media-guru-dude, James Whatley. But why all the recent attention?

You probably know the gist of the furore that has encompassed the company in recent weeks. If not, you can read about it here.

The whole incident has generated unprecedented media attention: numerous posts on the BBC website, national newspapers, Techcrunch… the list goes on.

Then yesterday, Spinvox invited its main detractors to attend a demo at its HQ to see for themselves (or not) just what the fuss is (or isn’t) all about.

Which still leaves me with the question – why all the fuss?

I’m not trying to let Spinvox off the hook. They’ve made mistakes and there is a clear lack of transparency there somewhere. I also don’t think the PR has been handled at all well during this little spat (but that’s another post for another time). Anyone that thinks any publicity is good publicity is misguided.

So is this just an example of a media man/company-hunt? Did the lack of a clear and quick response from the company create a mountain out of a molehill or does the company really have something to answer?

It’ll be fascinating to see how they try and recover from here. Despite their buoyant claims about increases in sign-ups following the BBC coverage and their latest funding round, I think it’s going to be a battle.

Farewell Paul Carr?

Mike Butcher’s written a great piece on Techcrunch in response to Paul Carr’s latest column in the Guardian, which lambasts the state of London’s start-up scene. Mike’s counter argument is both well thought-out and winning (which you would expect given his job and stature).

But it’s his comments about the media industry in general that I really want to cover. He flags up Paul Carr’s announcement (via Twitter of course) that he’ll no longer be doing his Guardian column: “The Guardian has slashed its freelance budget. Result – no more column from me. Thought about writing it for free, but meh.”

I think Paul Carr’s great (and I know many don’t!). Yes, he’s arrogant, big headed and likes to name-drop. He’s also prone to putting the cat amongst the pigeons. But that is all deliberate and, whilst I sometimes don’t agree with the point he’s making, it makes you think and is often the start of a wider, more useful debate (of which this is a good example). His column also fills a gap in the Guardian’s output and, as far as I can tell from the sheer volume of comments and tweets, surely drives a significant amount of traffic.

So why is he going?

Well, declining print ad revenues etc. etc. mean less money for expensive freelance columnists – and I imagine that Paul Carr certainly fits into that bracket. Which does seem odd considering his popularity. But, as Mike states:

“…here’s a newspaper culling a column that almost certainly punched above its weight in terms of traffic, and probably got a lot more comments and reader interaction than the average post on that site. How many traditional journos would get this kind of reaction?

“That’s significant because at the same time “traditional” journalists (some of whom are my best friends btw) are doing their best to try and grapple with writing stories, blogging, posting videos and metaphorically washing up the boss’s coffee cup in the staff kitchen at the same time.”

Paul’s words aren’t lost forever! He was well-known before writing for the Guardian, and being on their books won’t have done his book sales any harm at all. But it is yet another indictment of the decline of ‘traditional media’ and the power and rise of bloggers and media ‘personalities’ who don’t need a publishing house behind them to be successful. And that’s great for people like Carr. It’s harder though for less forthright journalists.

UPDATE: Interestingly, Carr has posted an update on his blog:

“Initially I mooted the idea of carrying on writing for free until the economics started to look better but, yunno, the more I thought about it, the more I realised that would be a bad idea.

“The truth of the matter is, I’m rubbish at writing for free. You only have to look at how infrequently this blog is updated, and how badly it is when it is, to see the problem.”

He also suggests that he is likely to be ‘back soon’:

“Flatteringly, since Twittering the news of my most recent parting of ways I’ve had a few interesting offers – both online and off – which would allow me to continue the column. I’ve dismissed a few, shortlisted a handful and am seriously interested in maybe three.”

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