Did I just catch Techcrunch astroturfing?
So I’m reading Techcrunch, and what do I see?
A story titled: Buy and Sell Proprietary Knowledge Through GenApple.
Interesting…right? So I click to read…and what do I find?
People are continually looking for new pieces of information. We go to school, read articles on a variety of subjects, have free websites such as Wikipedia, and use search answer engines such as Aardvark and Quora for the sole purpose of quenching our never-ending thirst for knowledge.
Now here is where I get a WTF moment. I can see listing Wikipedia, and Aardvark…both = knowledge and both = huge companies(established with large user base).
But Quora? Why on earth, would that be included instead of Yahoo Answers or one of the premium Q&A sites?
Here are some bits of info:
- Quora is in private beta(so you can’t even join without an invite)
- Quora only had 2725 users as of the moment I saw the article(got a 500 error on 2726), and like 99% of them are techies.
- Most questions on Quora are unanswered.
- I searched for the author’s name on Quora, and didn’t find a single mention of him(quora lets you search member names). The only guy I found from Techcrunch on Quora is MG Siegler, and he has 0 Questions and 0 Answers.
So based on that data…how does the author recommend something, without even using it?
Was there some PR Agency involved? And if so, which one, since it’s obvious they know what they are doing. Or was this just a friend helping out his friends(author and one of Quora folks went to the same school)? And if so, where is the disclaimer?
Disclaimer: I run Style Guidance a fashion and style Q&A site.
