Early Facebook backer Sean Parker, on stage at European conference DLD, just gave perhaps his most comprehensive reaction to The Social Network movie yet, calling it “a complete work of fiction.”

During the end of the movie his character, payed by actor Justin Timberlake, is at a party where drugs are being taken and various beautiful models are wondering around.

“I kind’ve wish my life were that cool,” said Parker.

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—I have no vested interest in the success or failure of Quora.  And, given the fire I've already taken for tweeting an opinion that defies the Valley's infinite wisdom, I know that this post will offend many in Silicon Valley—as did my piece on why I Craigslisted my iPads.  But I just don't believe that Quora will "rule" or become anything like Facebook or Twitter.  It has been a very nice private club; but it's not for the general public.

Quora is a new question-and-answer site on which a few notable members of Silicon Valley's tech elite have expressed their opinions.  Some of the discussions have been very informative; some, completely misinformed.  Some questions are of general interest, such as: Will there be a tech sector crash in the near future?; some are obscure: Who are the most successful entrepreneurs with Iranian roots?; some are just plain silly: How much does Netflix spend on postage each year? Quora's membership is growing largely because of the attention that TechCrunch has given it (including the Best Startup award). Over the last month, I have received dozens of messages from TechCrunch readers asking what I think about Quora and why I am not using it.

The answer is simple: I think that Quora will continue to be an excellent resource if the same people who have been hyping it, and who have invested in it, keep posting their thoughtful answers. But I believe that the excess hype is destined to make Quora a victim of its own press.  The quality of answers will decline.  The people whose opinion I value, such as Quora's #1 respondent, Robert Scoble, will simply stop posting on the site when they get drowned out by the noise from the masses.  They will turn away after having their posts voted down (so that they look less important than their peers) and being personally subjected to the types of mindless, anonymous attacks that you see in the comments section of TechCrunch.

Not to say that there aren't many other smart people who will post good answers.  But when there are hundreds of answers to a given question, by people you have never heard of (often with fictitious names), how will you separate the wheat from the chaff?  And how will you distinguish fact from fiction?  You certainly can't trust the rankings of the respondents when these rankings are themselves generated by Quora users.

Quora says it will educate users on its policies, guidelines, and conventions and that it will moderate answers more effectively.  It claims that the site does not allow anonymity.  But you can easily sign up for a Quora account with any of your Twitter accounts (you can create as many of these as you want—with fictitious names).  You can then vote down answers from people you don't like, edit questions asked by others, and post your own views.  You can talk about your own products and services, and disparage others’; in other words, it is a spammers' paradise.  How is Quora going to manage hundreds of thousands—or millions—of unruly users, when even the mighty Google seems to be losing the battle for spam?

Right now, Quora is tech focused.  Its fans proudly proclaim that its usage will spread, just as usage of Twitter did; that it will become a platform for everything from product research to customer service to education.  Robert Scoble expects it to create a "great community and way for people to communicate about what's interesting in their lives in a new way".

Silicon Valley is again drinking its own Kool-Aid; it is looking at the world through its own prism. This is a common problem here, where we jump from one fad to another; where venture capitalists start investing in similar technologies and drive company valuations through the roof; where TechCrunch hypes the technology du jour and causes entrepreneurs all over the world to drop what they are doing in favor of building copycat technologies.

Quora isn't going to be a Facebook or a Twitter. It is not likely to even catch up with the current market leaders in the Q&A space—Answers.com and Yahoo! Answers (which both get more than 40 million unique visitors a month, compared with Quora's meager 150,000). Unlike Facebook, where everyone socializes, and Twitter, where ordinary people tell their friends what they are thinking, a Quora-like tool is only for those who want to learn what their intellectual peers are saying on, or to research, a particular topic.  This is for the tech types—who dabble in technology and dream about things like startups and funding.

What is more likely to happen and makes far more sense is that a new generation of private, gated communities will grow and evolve.  This is where people with common interests will gather and exchange ideas.  For example, for people seeking legal advice, there is LawPivot, and for businesses looking for experts, there is Focus.   For techies, there are sites like StackOverflow, Slashdot, Hacker News; for children, there is Togetherville; for business students, there is PoetsandQuants; for entrepreneurs in India, there is StartupQnA; for Indian accountants, there is CAClubIndia; and China has its own groups, and so do many other countries.  Why do the Silicon Valley elite believe that everyone will flock to a U.S.-based tech site like Quora?

I am not delusional enough to believe that I can predict the future or guess what the technology landscape will look like a couple of years from now.  But I can make one educated guess.  My guess is that TechCrunch will stop talking about Quora within a few months and that we'll be discussing the next big fad.

**Photo Credit: Andrew Fair

Editor's note: Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa and find his research at www.wadhwa.com.

Two days ago, Verizon posted their first iPhone teaser commercial to their YouTube page. The tagline? “It begins.” Now, it looks as if Apple is ready to follow suit with its own marketing muscle. But they’re not just playing up the Verizon iPhone, but rather the fact that it’s now on two networks in the U.S. The tagline for this one? “Two is better than one.”

The 30-second clip below was posted to YouTube today. It’s a fairly standard iPhone ad with a hand holding up an iPhone 4 in front of a white background. Except in this commercial, there are two iPhone 4′s side-by-side. As Strauss’ Blue Danube Waltz plays, the dueling iPhones perform the same tasks in the same way — though there are differences in the pictures being looked at, and the websites being visited, etc. Then the focus shifts to one the devices to show off iPhone 4′s features. Then it’s back to the two phones, culminating in a side-by-side FaceTime conversation. The phones are then removed, revealing both AT&T and Verizon logos. Then the tagline is put up. Then the iPhone 4 logo.

This type of commercial makes perfect sense for Apple. Since AT&T is still a vital partner for the device, Apple can’t afford to alienate them by putting out Verizon iPhone-only commercials. It’s the same reason why it was Verizon, and not Apple, that led the announcement of the device earlier this month.

Further, the commercial works because Apple emphasizes that the device on the different networks are the same, you just have a choice now. That’s not entirely true, since the Verizon iPhone won’t be able to do talking & surfing at the same time (insert the joke about the AT&T iPhone not being able to do calls at all), but all the core iPhone features will be the same.

One thing not touted in the commercial is the Personal Hotspot feature. Verizon still hasn’t announced the pricing for this, and Apple still hasn’t confirmed that it will come to AT&T also with a future iOS upgrade (though it seems like it will be the case).

This is one of those technology and legal stories that is hard to believe in this day and age. If you are in Illinois, you better be careful where you point your cameraphone or voice recorder. Chris Drew, a Chicago artist, and Tiawanda Moore, a former stripper, are facing up to 15 years in prison for eavesdropping, according to a story in the Chicago News Cooperative. Drew used an Olympus voice recorder to commit his crime and Moore used her Blackberry.

Moore is scheduled to go on trial early next month for recording Internal Affairs investigators when she filed a sexual harassment complaint. Moore claims the investigators tried to get her to drop her complaint, so she took out her Blackberry and started a recording which resulted in her arrest. Drew goes on trial in April for recording his conversation with Chicago police officers, without their permission, when he was arrested for selling art without a permit. It’s just a misdemeanor to sell art with no permit, but the voice recorder is causing much bigger problems.

Both are being charged under the rarely enforced The Illinois Eavesdropping Act, which makes it illegal to audio-record either private or public conversations without the consent of all parties. Illinois is one of 12 states with “two-party consent” eavesdropping laws on the books.

A challenge to the law failed earlier this month when a US District Judge ruled there is no “right to audio record,” claiming it would be “an unprecedented expansion of the First Amendment.” That’s saying there is freedom of speech, but even in public, there isn’t freedom to record. That may come as a shock to millions of iPhone, Android, and Blackberry users.

Here’s the kicker, which got both Drew and Moore in deeper trouble, according to the story. Audio recording a civilian in Illinois is a felony with up to 3 years in prison the first time you do it and up to 5 years if you do it again. But the penalties are much stiffer if you record certain people.

Audio-recording a law-enforcement officer, state's attorney, assistant state's attorney, attorney general, assistant attorney general or judge in the performance of his or her duties is a Class 1 felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

Most states have an exception for civilians recording police conversations in public. But not Illinois.

There is an exception in Illinois that allows law-enforcement officers to legally record civilians in private or public. But, not the other way around.

Nowadays, nearly everyone is carrying around a camera and phone capable of making audio recordings. As Adam Schwartz, an ACLU lawyer who has challenged the law pointed out, when “something fishy seems to be going on, the perfectly natural and healthy and good thing is for them to pull that device out and make a recording.” You might think twice about making that recording if you are in Illinois.

Those of you who attended the Crunchies last night or watched the live stream were lucky enough to see Jonathan Mann perform a new song that he wrote specifically for the event. “The Crunchies Song” sums up the event pretty nicely. Find both Mann’s live performance and his official video for the song below.

You’ll note that this is actually Mann’s 750th song on YouTube. Yes, he has created a song everyday for over two years now. You might recall some of them, as we’ve posted a number of them — like the one he wrote about me, the one he wrote about Steve Jobs, the one he wrote about the iPhone 4 antenna (which Apple even played at their press conference), the Steven Slater song, and, the one that first put him on our radar, the Bing Jingle (and the follow-up). Mann even wrote a song to congratulate us on the AOL deal.

The abrupt retirement/resignation/deck chair shifting of Google CEO Eric Schmidt couldn’t have been timed better — if you were Facebook. As dissected by the Gillmor Gang, the news of Larry Page’s reascension to the throne seemed just one more shoe dropping in the wake of Steve Ballmer’s axing of Bob Muglia, Steve Jobs’ step back to focus on his health, and other reboots from companies including HP, SAP, and I forget. Actually, mentioning HP and SAP served to bore me into stopping the last sentence.

The one connective tissue is the tectonic shift in technology caused by the iPad, or as @Scobleizer pointed out, the iPhone. Though @DannySullivan and @KevinMarks insisted on extolling the virtues of the free and open Web, there’s no doubt in my mind that Apple’s (and particularly Steve Jobs’) combination of design, control of a hungry niche marketplace, and political savvy adds up to a defining moment that rolls up media, technology, consumers, and the enterprise. And instead of running plays from their own playbooks, Apple’s competitors are working to undermine or dilute the impact of iOS.

Schmidt was not so much a victim of the Apple blitzkrieg as the notion of Google inevitability, or certainly invincibility. No one event or fumble seemed to add up to a reason for the firing, but rather there was the feeling of the absence of a strategy, a game plan, a vision if you must, of how to move beyond the lock on the world’s search market. It felt like the way the pioneers must have felt when they ran out of land at the Pacific Ocean. Cut off from China, shut down by the consumer electronics manufacturers with Google TV, and facing a developer base confused by old style jousting with Apple around H.264 and HTML 5, Brin and Page decided to graduate from middle school.

Whether Brin can nail social any more than he has tried for the last few years, or Page can soften up the media against his DNA, the striking question we had was not whether the Schmidt move was too radical but rather why not do the same thing with Ballmer. As @JTaschek ticked off the definition of what a modern CEO does in the Age of Facebook and Twitter, it occurred to me that both Google and Microsoft should look toward someone who comes from the the Industry Formerly Known as the Media to turn things around. Besides, Ricky Gervais is out of work.

Buoyed by news that early Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin led an $8 million investment in the startup, TechCrunch Disrupt winner and visual search startup Qwiki has hit no.1 on Google Trends ‘Hot Searches’ in the U.S. That’s a pretty impressive feat for a startup that was virtually unknown six months ago. And the company is still in private alpha.

What makes Qwiki so compelling is its ability to generate media on the fly that combines text, audio, and animated photos. It presents information in a highly visual way, assembling photos and spoken text from Wikipedia and other sources to create visual guides to millions of topics. The startup’s technology is no doubt disruptive and could become a completely new way in which we consume information.

Qwiki is planning to launch an iPad app, which is in the works.

Below is a video of Qwiki's first demo at Disrupt.

This is truly some bulletproof storage, amirite? Today we’re giving away the ioSafe Rugged Portable hard drive, a warranted drive that can withstand a shotgun blast, salt fog, and all kinds of other crazy stuff. The drive, which is shipping at the end of the month, costs $149 but can be yours for the low, low price of one comment.

Read more…

Last night at the Crunchies, Yuri Milner of Digital Sky Technologies won the VC of the Year award (Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures was a close runner-up). Milner has almost single-handedly created a new class of mezzanine venture capital, allowing companies like Facebook, Groupon, and Zynga to postpone IPOs while still getting a ton of liquidity and huge valuations.

Before he could leave the stage after accepting his award last night, Michael tried to ambush interview him. Milner deadpanned his way through the every question, and the result was pretty entertaining (see video above). Arrington asked why his investment philosophy is working out so well, noting that Milner invests at what many people at the time think are absurd valuations.

“Because of absurd valuations,” replied Milner.

Arrington: “Has that ever not worked out for you?”

Milner quipped: “We’ve only made three investments: Facebook, Groupon, and Zynga.”

Arrington: “What happened with Twitter?” (a deal DST wasn’t able to get in on).

Milner: “Nothing happened.”

Back in April 2009, I wrote about a site called ClusterShot, which aimed to rival Getty Images-owned stock photography juggernaut iStockphoto. Almost two years later, the company’s calling it quits – unless a reasonable buyer steps forward with a reasonable offer.

Ironically enough, last I’d heard about ClusterShot was when they reportedly reached profitability less than a year after launching.

In a blog post published last night, CEO Dan James explains:

A little over two years ago we launched ClusterShot. We very openly called it an experiment. It was not only a technical experiment but an experiment for our company’s cultural and economic models. The experiment is coming to an end.

We, silverorange, have decided to shut ClusterShot down. This may not be a surprise to some of you; as you may have noticed, our zeal for the site quickly disappeared this summer. There are many reasons for this but the overarching theme is simply: it wasn’t quite successful enough.

ClusterShot has immediately suspended pro-account sign ups, photo uploading and new account creations, and will be refunding people who’ve already paid for the premium service in full, if they’ve signed up for a pro account within the last 2 months.

James also says there’s a 0% commission on all photos sold until the site is shut down, which is scheduled to happen on February 21.

Unless of course, a party comes forward with an offer to buy it:

If you really, really want to save ClusterShot then please make us an offer. We are open to selling the entire site, brand, and system to someone who wants to take it to the next level1. No reasonable offer by a reasonable party will be refused.

There is a lot of technical investment in ClusterShot by one of the better web development firms out there. We have spent over two years working on ClusterShot and have done what we think are some pretty cool things with it.

ClusterShot was one of the ventures of Canadian web development company silverorange, which counts Digg’s creative director and co-founder of Pownce Daniel Burka among its co-founders and partners.

It’s now going in the TechCrunch deadpool, until further notice.

(Thanks to Ferdinand J. Reinke for the tip)

Sony has just announced that Qriocity, the strangely named cloud-based digital music service it aims to rival Apple's iTunes with, is now immediately available in France, Germany, Italy and Spain. The service, which is apparently called "Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity" in full, made its debut in the UK and Ireland in December 2010, and provides users with access to a catalogue of millions of songs from labels like - surprise - Sony Music, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and EMI Music as well as several independent labels and publishers.