It has already been vehemently denied and furiously predicted that the quickly expanding Q&A site Quora is ‘everybody’s favorite new thing,’ the hottest question-and-answer website you’ve never heard of, the end of blogging (as well as its future), and a dizzying host other equally wild tabloid-like prophecies that UK’s Guardian classed, for the tech world, as a ‘near-hysteria.’
A CNET article published Tuesday, used such traditional tabloid terminology as bat boy found in cave ‘perfect storm’ and ‘tipping point’ (one of my old favorites) to describe the Quora’s situation, saying: it’s“not ‘everyone’s talking about it,’ but rather, ‘everyone’s using it.’” To use the journalistic key term of the moment here, what could possibly be more shocking than such a properly paranoid blanket statement?(Shocking, we should remember, is also the best word to describe the more sordid details of Assange’s sex life , the latest dead bird phenomena , the coming pole shift, or an especially self-destructive post-rehab Lindsay Lohan sighting.)
And what self-flagellating paparazzo tirelessly trolling for his next target could possibly miss a headline like this, courtesy of Fast Company : Quora Builds Buzz with A-List Answers? And as Lydia Dishman will explain, these aren’t just any A listers; so let’s slow our e-gushing down to an easy ten tweets per second (TPS is the web’s newest measure of cultural movement) just long enough to listen:
“Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz offers his opinion of the movie The Social Network. Google Images product manager Nate Smith explains how color image search works. Foursquare’s head of business development talks about what it’s like to work for founder Dennis Crowley. Twitter’s Pierre Legrain explains the cost-per-follow principle for Promoted AccountsM. And AOL co-founder Steve Case answers how much it cost to mail everyone those CDs back in the 1990s.”
If this were a celebrity party (and to some extent it certainly is) surely Page Six and Guest of a Guest would be envious… if they weren’t covering it.
Which is if anything a sign that going forward the most effective formula for success when building a so-called ‘social’ media startup (and probably any media startup), is quite the same one as planning a socialite heiress it girl, hipster party boy, or androgynous in-between’s first fashion-line party: beg daddy for money, attract a cabal of the hautest celebrities (be it with free champagne, cocaine, currency, or photo opportunities), and invite paparazzi .
Forgive my re-using the abhorrent buzzword, but wasn’t this always ‘social media’s’ manifest destiny?
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