Why I was wrong about Quora as a blogging service ...
Context & Ripple Effects
Robert Scoble framed Quora in December 2010 as potentially the biggest blogging innovation in ten years, and that framing helped carry the service through a January marked by exploding signups and a hot streak of valuation chatter — though how much Quora is worth remains unconfirmed speculation.
A week ago a skeptical counterweight landed when a university professor disputed the hype without any stake in Quora's success, and confirmed reporting has flagged real friction: infrastructure straining under growth and an open question about avoiding Yahoo Answers' decline. Today Scoble publicly reverses himself, making him one of the hype cycle's most prominent converts-to-skeptic.
First-order effects
- Scoble's reversal hands Quora's critics — including the professor behind the January 23 takedown — a high-profile endorsement of their case, at the exact moment the service is struggling to scale its infrastructure for its new users.
Second-order effects
- The Q&A space's sudden spotlight, which created room for niche competitors, now gets tested by a cooling of influencer sentiment; rivals and investors watching Quora's valuation rumors get their first sign that the attention wave can recede as fast as it arrived.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, early-2011-style Q&A hype cycles resolve into a familiar test — whether a community product can hold quality while scaling past its enthusiast base, the same decline path that caught Yahoo Answers — rather than a new permanent category.
The trend: Influencer-driven hype cycles around consumer social products are compressing — from December's 'biggest innovation' framing to public reversals inside two months — forcing the market to price Q&A platforms on retention and moderation rather than buzz.