Why I Don't Buy the Quora Hype
Let me start with a disclaimer: I am not writing this in my capacity as a university professor or researcher; I don't claim to be an expert on social networking; and I will be happy to be proven wrong—I have no vested interest in the success or failure of Quora.
Context & Ripple Effects
Vivek Wadhwa's piece lands mid-hype-cycle: Quora is being talked up across Silicon Valley as the next big social product, and a university professor — writing with explicit disclaimers that he claims no social-networking expertise and no vested interest either way — is staking out the contrarian position that the excitement outruns the substance. The framing matters because it continues a line of argument he has run before, notably his 2009 challenge to how much value VCs actually add to innovation, positioning him as a recurring skeptic of Valley consensus narratives.
The immediate counter-reaction was small but fast: Semil Shah posted a point-by-point response on his Posterous the same day, which tells you the critique was treated as an argument to be answered rather than noise to be ignored.
First-order effects
- The piece gives Quora's hype cycle its first prominent credentialed skeptic on a major tech outlet, forcing the site's boosters to defend the product on merits rather than momentum.
Second-order effects
- Same-day rebuttals like Shah's show the dynamic such critiques set off: commentators are pulled into taking explicit sides, turning a single opinion column into a public debate that raises the stakes for whoever is wrong.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, consumer web products entering a hype phase will increasingly face their credibility test through public skeptic-versus-evangelist exchanges, and Q&A-style services specifically will be judged on whether answer quality survives growth beyond the enthusiast core.
The trend: Silicon Valley hype cycles are increasingly contested in public by credentialed outsiders whose explicit disclaimers become part of the argument itself.