Search Results for: calacanis

by
8 Comments

Jason Calacanis Launches Human Powered Search Engine Mahalo.com

posted on May 31, 2007

One way to ensure your new human-powered search engine is a success is to give it a Hawaiian name. It worked for Jimmy Wales – Wikipedia is a huge success and “Wiki wiki” is Hawaiian for “quick” – and it could work for Jason Calacanis’ new search engine, Mahalo.com (Hawaiian for thank you).

The site has just launched in “alpha”, and Calacanis is quick to let us know what exactly that means…

Mahalo.com is in ALPHA–that means not ready for users, but looking for feedback. :-)

Calacanis’ business buddy, Michael Arrington, has a comprehensive write-up on Mahalo (he’s not invested, but working with Jason on another project).

by
9 Comments

Jason Calacanis Building the Next Google?

posted on May 1, 2007

Having recently read Jason Calacanis’ blog post about how to correctly place your lips on his butt, if you want him to link to you, I can’t help but think Valleywag’s speculation, that the former blogging mogul is building a search engine, is nothing but that.

While there’s no doubt that Calacanis is a smart guy and has all the connections needed to get the backing for a Google challenger, I just don’t see why he would take on such a tremendously futile project.

While you can point out that no one expected Google to become so powerful, when it launched, the search industry is littered with companies that launched with a fanfare, before being crushed by the Google juggernaut.

by
11 Comments

The Secret to Business Blogging Success? Don’t Ask Jason Calacanis

posted on August 25, 2008

This Washington Post piece about business blogging both perplexes and delights me.

Why perplexed? It opens and closes with a case study about Jason Calacanis. While Calacanis was at the frontier of blogging for dollars–and extremely successful with Weblogs Inc–the case study talks about Calacanis’s decision to dump blogging in favor of a newsletter. It simply doesn’t fit with the remainder of the article. It’s almost as if the journalist had the interviewing lying around and decided to push a square peg into a round hole.

OK, that aside, if you are weighing the advantages of your business joining the blogosphere, then you should make time to read the article. While it won’t offer all the answers to your questions, it will provide you with some real world examples of how businesses are growing thanks to blogging.

by
10 Comments

Will Jason Calacanis Evangelize SEO?

posted on March 26, 2007

Neil Patel has provided an update on his challenge to show Jason Calacanis that SEO is not “snake oil” and can in fact help a site increase its search engine traffic.

Here’s the latest from Neil…

Currently SEO changes are still being made and around 10% of them have been made so far which has resulted in 7,449 search engine visitors between March 14th and March 19th. This proves that there was a 21.14% increase in search traffic…When everything is done I estimate a 50% or so increase in search traffic.

Neil’s ability to improve Calacanis’ search traffic was never really in question, the key is to now get Calacanis to go back on his scathing comments.

Nice work Neil!

by
0 Comments

Alan Meckler and Jason Calacanis Face Off

posted on April 19, 2006

The WSJ has Meckler and Calacanis discussing whether the typical blogger can make money from their blog.

Meckler says…”few people if any will ever make money from writing a blog.”

Calacanis says…If folks focus in on a niche and own it there is a good chance they could make half a living from blogging.”

by
12 Comments

Break into the “A-list” (Whether It Exists or Not)

posted on March 20, 2007

So, unsurprisingly, Jason Calacanis has once again inflamed some bloggers by stating that there’s no such thing as “A-list” bloggers:

Give me a break… there is no A-List in blogging. Just people who’ve been blogging longer than others and who are smarter or better writers–or all of those things.

I think there are a lot of folks who think because they re-blog a couple of stories a day for a couple of weeks, and they don’t go anywhere in terms of traffic, that they are being “held back’ by the A list. That’s BS… those folks are basically the losers who think that their success in blogging is based on other people.

Kinda reminds me of how hard it is for new sites to rank well against really well established ones. I don’t think that search engines or the blogosphere are a perfect “meritocracy.” The bloggers and websites that deserve the most attention, for quality writing or awesome products and services, don’t always get it.

Granted, much of the A-list has worked very hard to get where they are today. It remains to be seen whether the same amount of work today could achieve the same results. But if you’re up to it, Calacanis and others offer 20 tips (okay, there’s some overlap) on how to get into the (nonexistant) A-list.

by
14 Comments

SEOs – Slimebuckets or Geniuses?

posted on February 8, 2007

Ladies and gentleman, presenting the heavy-weight battle for the reputation of search engine optimizers.

In the red-corner, we have Jason Calacanis, who blogs a whole bunch of criticisms of SEOs, without backing up any facts or responding to reader’s comments and questions.

…the truth is that 90% of the SEO market is made up of snake oil salesman. These are guys in really bad suits trying to get really naive people to sign long-term contracts. These clients typically make horrible products and don’t deserve traffic–that’s why they’re not getting it organically so they hire the slimebuckets to game the system for them.

In the blue-corner, we have IAC’s Barry Diller, singing the praises of SEO.