Wannabe 'Expert' Vivek Wadhwa smears Quora. Humiliated by a *Real* VC!

Perhaps you're wondering who pissed in my little sahib's cheerios this morning. Maybe it's all the flack he's gotten over a half-assed smear piece he wrote about Quora, in order to 'establish' himself there.

Well, since I'm just as much of a partygoer with QA-fora as the next John Galt, I chipped in that I know about my wuvable little sahib:

When dealing with any Vivek Wadhwa post, nay, any post from an academic it helps to read it like a book report: beginning and punchline:

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—

..and yet he commits poison pen to paper. Or finger to keyboard. Okay, TL d' DR... until we get to the punchline:

Why do the Silicon Valley elite believe that everyone will flock to a U.S.-based tech site like Quora?

Please note that the italics are his and not mine. The whole point of his book report was to hit quora because it did not come from India or China.

That is, if it's not from Hyderabad, it's...bad. He basically made up this straw man about HIS "expectations" of Quora and then knocked it down -- like the last time he tried to do anything in SV.

Wadhwa is the Cramer of Tech. Arrington gave him life, and he's been 'prolific' ever since.

Other than that: You guys still take Scoble seriously. Cute.

(via Uncle Drunky's answer to the obvious tag/pageview whoring on Quora)

I suppose we shouldn't get into using your own students to impersonate Quora users or flagrant violations of their TOS. But hey, even SV heavies like Michael Wolfe ain't buyin' it. Srsly, everyone including Fraudy's students should read this utter pownage of my little sahib:

"I’m not comfortable with this kind of tone and try to avoid it, but I thought that if I were ever going to try it out and see what kind of reaction it got, this would be the place to do it.

(And now that I’ve seen Robert Scoble’s severed head on Quora Review, I’m a bit less worried that I’ve crossed a line!)

My irk is this:

Vivek has a tremendous platform: his TechCrunch distribution gets him in front of millions of users, and his academic credentials give him authority and credibility (maybe not to you guys, but you have some background here). But he starts the article with a half-assed disclaimer ‘I am not an expert’ that let’s him cave later if he is wrong, write a poorly-reasoned piece, but still leverage his enormous pulpit.

He then makes no effort to make his article even internally consistent. He does none of the background research or anticipate any of the obvious counter arguments, then lays out a blanket insult of all of SV as being clueless dilettantes out of touch with what plays on main street, right after he himself essentially says main street is too dumb to spend time reading, research, writing, and upvoting good content.

There are good arguments against Quora, but he makes none of them."

(Via A response to Mr. Wadhwa « The Quora Review.)

Serious confidential to my little sahib: You've been doing this for years. When are you going to settle down to a tenured position in Berkeley with a wife & kids & the curry colored picket fence? Will Berkeley not have you?

-Drunky out.

PS. Love that image of Scoble's severed head. I'm liking this Wolfe guy already.