There’s something about Quora. Its interface has just the right ratio of cleanliness to sexiness. Its seamless implementation of Facebook Connect login catches one’s mouse from across a crowded monitor. Its lithe speed makes the heart beat a little faster. But the quality of its questions and answers makes one fall in love. The rest of Silicon Valley seems to share my infatuation; after all, everyone is on it.
Yet for the Silicon Valley set, “everyone” equals fewer than 8000 users. This has led to an insidery Q&A wonderland filled with rarefied folks in our world… Plus a whole lot of fanboydom. To wit, a recent question: “If Quora were a reality show, who would the archetypal characters be?” Evidently, the Quora crowd crushes on Keith Rabois the Jock, relishes Yishan Wong’s profundity mixed with humor, and is mesmerized by -- albeit slightly scared of -- Eunji Choi, the Bad Girl.
Speaking of Eunji the Bad Girl, we now work together. How’d we meet? On Quora. Of late, it seems every startup worth its salt is recruiting employees there. I know three separate founders who’ve met and hired people via Quora in the past few weeks. Question and Answer quality is an excellent screen for both general knowledge and domain expertise. Moreover, the interplay between users – as captured by follower:following ratio, comments, and voting – is in most cases a solid proxy for how one engages with others in the physical world. LinkedIn had better be watching these guys and gals closely.
Quora is also becoming a destination where VCs suss out new companies and evaluate potential investments. Want to quickly gauge social proof around a startup? Search Quora. The startup I work at – Topguest – has been deliberately under the radar since we wrote our first line of code about 8 weeks ago. After all, we’re pre-launch; no need to make a big fuss. Yet after we popped up in a few Quora questions earlier this week, I was deluged with inquiries from close to a dozen VC firms.
If you work at a startup but aren’t on Quora, you’re missing out on one hell of a stash.
*Please excuse typos. Written on my iPhone*
Personal blog of Geoffrey Lewis. Musings of a first time founder trying to keep it glued together @topguest, formerly @udorse . Different is good
4/09/2010
1/18/2010
The New Star Maker Machinery
I was a free man in Paris
I felt unfettered and alive
I'd go back there tomorrow
But for the work I've taken on
Stoking the star maker machinery
- Joni Mitchell
We've been a celebrity obsessed culture for over half a century. But until recently, fame was largely it's own reward. The stars were richer than most, but the machinery that today catapults America's top celebs to stratospheric wealth was largely absent. That changed in the 1970s with the emergence of the Big 4 talent agencies: CAA, William Morris, ICM, and UTA. In that decade, people like David Geffen -- the "Free Man in Paris" Joni Mitchell sings about -- turned famous people into platforms that could become both vehicles for brand messaging, and brands themselves.
Fast forward 35 years, and we all get a shot at something resembling fame thanks to the social web. Microcelebrity. Even though the term was coined just a few years ago, it's now almost passe to speak of how it's become lifestyle for so many. At SXSW last year, Chris Anderson advised the audience to "Create microcelebrity and then monetize it."
This time around, there's no man behind the curtain. Microcelebs are their own agents. Will "fame" be payment enough for the long tail? Or will they want some of that "monetize" stuff too?
The "create" part is fun. Services like Facebook and Twitter provide the fundamental plumbing. Apps like foursquare help us sustain microcelebrity by sharing interesting data about what we do in realtime, and even give us points and badges to keep score. Facebook photos have been one of the key vehicles by which the frat presidents, cheerleading captains, and party animals among us have achieved microcelebrity, and hence emerging services like Photocheck.in are interesting to me.
Where it gets scary is the "monetize" part. The old answer of "it isn't tacky for celebrities to get paid for promoting stuff because they are different from the rest of us" does not work if celebrities are no longer very different from the rest of us.
We are now entering a new wave of self-service star maker machinery that will provide low touch and scalable ways for people to monetize their microcelebrity if they chose to. Ad.Ly, Izea, and presumably Blippy [soon] all provide influencers with a form of monetization in exchange for sharing. Analytics tools help us fine tune the content we create to maximally delight our audiences. New web series UnderTheArch selects a group of popular NYU students each season, furnishes them with product placements, and films them at sponsor locales. When I spoke at Southern Methodist University last week, I was asked for advice on how to start a similar initiative there.
The trickle down of celebrity has societal implications we've only begun to understand. It is exciting, but potentially dangerous.
I felt unfettered and alive
I'd go back there tomorrow
But for the work I've taken on
Stoking the star maker machinery
- Joni Mitchell
We've been a celebrity obsessed culture for over half a century. But until recently, fame was largely it's own reward. The stars were richer than most, but the machinery that today catapults America's top celebs to stratospheric wealth was largely absent. That changed in the 1970s with the emergence of the Big 4 talent agencies: CAA, William Morris, ICM, and UTA. In that decade, people like David Geffen -- the "Free Man in Paris" Joni Mitchell sings about -- turned famous people into platforms that could become both vehicles for brand messaging, and brands themselves.
Fast forward 35 years, and we all get a shot at something resembling fame thanks to the social web. Microcelebrity. Even though the term was coined just a few years ago, it's now almost passe to speak of how it's become lifestyle for so many. At SXSW last year, Chris Anderson advised the audience to "Create microcelebrity and then monetize it."
This time around, there's no man behind the curtain. Microcelebs are their own agents. Will "fame" be payment enough for the long tail? Or will they want some of that "monetize" stuff too?
The "create" part is fun. Services like Facebook and Twitter provide the fundamental plumbing. Apps like foursquare help us sustain microcelebrity by sharing interesting data about what we do in realtime, and even give us points and badges to keep score. Facebook photos have been one of the key vehicles by which the frat presidents, cheerleading captains, and party animals among us have achieved microcelebrity, and hence emerging services like Photocheck.in are interesting to me.
Where it gets scary is the "monetize" part. The old answer of "it isn't tacky for celebrities to get paid for promoting stuff because they are different from the rest of us" does not work if celebrities are no longer very different from the rest of us.
We are now entering a new wave of self-service star maker machinery that will provide low touch and scalable ways for people to monetize their microcelebrity if they chose to. Ad.Ly, Izea, and presumably Blippy [soon] all provide influencers with a form of monetization in exchange for sharing. Analytics tools help us fine tune the content we create to maximally delight our audiences. New web series UnderTheArch selects a group of popular NYU students each season, furnishes them with product placements, and films them at sponsor locales. When I spoke at Southern Methodist University last week, I was asked for advice on how to start a similar initiative there.
The trickle down of celebrity has societal implications we've only begun to understand. It is exciting, but potentially dangerous.
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