Sunday, January 31, 2010
LIST: Grammy Award Winners 2010: http://bit.ly/c1sSMg #grammys
http://www.mahalo.com/grammy-awards-2010
2010 Grammy Award Nominees and Winners
RECORD OF THE YEAR
- "Halo," Beyonce
- "I Gotta Feeling," The Black Eyed Peas
- "Use Somebody," Kings of Leon - WINNER
- "Poker Face," Lady Gaga
- "You Belong With Me," Taylor Swift
ALBUM OF THE YEAR
- "I Am...Sasha Fierce," Beyonce
- "The E.N.D.," The Black Eyed Peas
- "The Fame," Lady Gaga
- "Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King," Dave Matthews Band
- "Fearless," Taylor Swift
SONG OF THE YEAR
- "Poker Face," Lady Gaga & RedOne
- "Pretty Wings," Hod David & Musze
- "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)," Thaddis Harrell, Beyonce Knowles, Terius Nash & Christopher Stewart -WINNER
- "Use Somebody," Caleb Followill, Jared Followill, Matthew Followill & Nathan Followill (Kings of Leon)
- "You Belong With Me," Liz Rose & Taylor Swift
BEST NEW ARTIST
BEST FEMALE POP VOCAL PERFORMANCE
- "Hometown Glory," Adele
- "Halo," Beyonce
- "Hot N Cold," Katy Perry
- "Sober," Pink
- "You Belong With Me," Taylor Swift
BEST ROCK ALBUM
- "Black Ice," AC/DC
- "Live From Madison Square Garden," Eric Clapton & Steve Winwood
- "21st Century Breakdown," Green Day - WINNER
- "Big Whiskey And the Groogrux King," Dave Matthews Band
- "No Line On The Horizon," U2
BEST RAP/SUNG COLLABORATION
- "Ego," Beyonce & Kanye West
- "Know You Down," Keri Hilson, Kanye West & Ne-Yo
- "Run This Town," Jay-Z, Rihanna & Kanye West
- "I'm On A Boat," The Lonely Island & T-Pain
- "Dead And Gone," T.I. & Justin Timberlake
BEST COUNTRY ALBUM
- "The Foundation," Zac Brown Band
- "Twang," George Strait
- "Fearless," Taylor Swift - WINNER
- "Defying Gravity," Keith Urban
- "Call Me Crazy," Lee Ann Womack
BEST COMEDY ALBUM
- Back From The Dead, Spinal Tap
- A Colbert Christmas The Greatest Gift Of All, Stephen Colbert - WINNER
- Internet Leaks, Weird Al Yankovic
- My Weakness Is Strong, Patton Oswalt
- Suckin’ It For The Holidays, Kathy Griffin
- Tall, Dark & Chicano, George Lopez
BEST MALE POP VOCAL PERFORMANCE
- "This Time," John Legend
- "Love You," Maxwell
- "Make It Mine," Jason Mraz - WINNER
- "If You Don't Know Me by Now," Seal
- "All About the Love Again," Stevie Wonder
BEST POP PERFORMANCE BY A DUO OR GROUP WITH VOCALS
- "I Gotta Feeling," The Black Eyed Peas - WINNER
- "We Weren't Born to Follow," Bon Jovi
- "Never Say Never," The Fray
- "Sara Smile," Daryl Hall & John Oates
- "Kids," MGMT
BEST POP COLLABORATION WITH VOCALS
- "Sea of Heartbreak," Rosanne Cash & Bruce Springsteen
- "Love Sex Magic," Ciara & Justin Timberlake
- "Lucky," Jason Mraz & Colbie Caillat - WINNER
- "Baby, It's Cold Outside," Willie Nelson & Norah Jones
- "Breathe," Taylor Swift & Colbie Caillat
BEST POP INSTRUMENTAL PERFORMANCE
- "Besame Mucho," Herb Alpert
- "Throw Down Your Heart," Bela Fleck - WINNER
- "The Fire," Imogen Heap
- "Phoenix Rise," Maxwell
- "Funk Joint," Marcus Miller
BEST POP INSTRUMENTAL ALBUM
- "In Boston," Chris Botti
- "Legacy," Hiroshima
- "Potato Hole," Booker T. Jones - WINNER
- "Modern Art," The Rippingtons Featuring Russ Freeman
- "Down The Wire," Spyro Gyra
My response to the wonderful SEO @aaronwall who's been giving us great, free advice!
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jason Calacanis
Date: Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 10:11 AM
Subject: Thanks again Aaron!
To: aaron@
From: Jason Calacanis
Date: Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 10:11 AM
Subject: Thanks again Aaron!
To: aaron@
Aaron,
We're taking a bunch of your advice and refining our SEO over the coming weeks.
1. The pages that are short content we're going to noindex after seven days of inactivity and delete them after some period and warnings to users. we don't have any interest in breaking any rules or even doing anything border line.... 90% of our traffic comes from the big content pages (how to, Q&A and walkthroughs) so there is no upside in these in progress/stub/whatever pages. Do you think is a good plan?
2. WRT to the "scraping" advice we are using Google, Bing, etc APIs to pull in their searches and refreshing them as the pages get traffic. Not sure what the issue is because our design takes shorter abstracts than Google/Bing/etc!
3. Do you think we should remove nofollow from our links? we added this to avoid the problem of SEOs coming in and turning Mahalo into a link farm... this has worked really well IMO. We've seen discussions on message boards where folks say "don't bother trying to use Mahalo for building links."
Anyway, thanks for keep us on our toes and we look forward to more great (free!) advice from you and your team. Our team had dinner in Korea Town last night during our quarterly "codejam" and they were all raving about your advice and brainstorming over it for an hour! We really do appreciate you spending so much time on our site, design and model.
Our new goal, now that we've reached the top 200 sites in the United States, is to:
a) be the largest content site in the United States (bigger than even Wikipedia and About.com!)
b) be the largest and most efficient Q&A site in the United States (yes, even bigger than Yahoo Answers so day)
c) be the best provider of comprehensive search results in the United States (note: comprehensive search to us is five or more search APIs on a page including things like links, news, blogs, twitter, products, books, images, videos, facebook, ebay, etc).
Without the critical eye of experts like yourself we'll never get there.... and for that we're thankful!
Where are you based? Would really love for you to come by Mahalo and have lunch with the team and continue the discussion of how we can do better--and even how we can use your SEO techniques to grow! Additionally, would love to have you on This Week in Startups.
all the best, j
---------------------
Jason McCabe Calacanis
CEO, http://www.Mahalo.com
Office: 310-593-6134 / Mobile: 310-456-4900
Blog: http://www.calacanis.com
Mailing list: http://bit.ly/jasonslist
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jason
AOL IM/Skype: jasoncalacanis
---------------------
Jason McCabe Calacanis
CEO, http://www.Mahalo.com
Office: 310-593-6134 / Mobile: 310-456-4900
Blog: http://www.calacanis.com
Mailing list: http://bit.ly/jasonslist
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jason
AOL IM/Skype: jasoncalacanis
Saturday, January 30, 2010
TSA Supervisors ridicule women, gays and minorities on white board
The TSA is a complete disaster.... you get what you pay for a I guess.
Starting Salary for a TSA agent? Around 24k. best jTSA Supervisors keep score and ridicule women, gays and minoritieshttp://www.cnn.com/2010/US/01/30/florida.tsa.investigation/ (CNN) -- The Transportation Security Administration has launched an
internal investigation into an air marshal field office in Florida
where supervisors are alleged to have used a crew assignment board to
ridicule and keep score on women, gays and minorities, sources told
CNN.The board, resembling the TV game show "Jeopardy," includes categories
such as "pickle smokers," "our gang" and "creatures," which sources
said were names used by managers for gay men, African-Americans and
lesbians.
Friday, January 29, 2010
VIDEO: If it's true folks are being fired for my joke I feel terrible. http://bit.ly/cIYPTB
It was clearly a joke and I thought people got it. All the feedback I got on Twitter was that folks--the top people in the industry--thought it was a joke. It was only until I woke up the next day that I found out that the Wall Street Journal, CNN and the New York Times had printed my joke as reality.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
READING: WSJ:Windows7 Boosts Microsoft's Profit--up 60% to $6.66B!
Technology Alert from The Wall Street Journal Microsoft's quarterly profit jumped 60% to $6.66 billion, benefiting from strong holiday sales of PC running the Windows 7 operating system. Revenue jumped 14% to $19.02 billion, including $1.7 billion in revenue Microsoft had to defer in previous quarters through its Windows 7 upgrade option. Peter Klein, Microsoft's chief financial officer, said the company sold more than 60 million copies, making it the fastest selling version in the company's history. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704878904575031521661435134.html?mod=djemalertTECH
"Catcher in the Rye" author JD Salinger died today at the age of 91 http://bit.ly/9HiS86
Fro the buzz team..... "Catcher in the Rye" author JD Salinger died today at the age of 91
http://www.mahalo.com/jd-salinger-dead
http://www.mahalo.com/jd-salinger-dead
VIDEO: Chris Matthews forgot Obama Was Black http://bit.ly/aPGQCK
From the Mahalo Buzz team... Did Chris Matthews just give credit to Obama for rising above his blackness? Perhaps it didn't come out the way he intended it.
Following President Obama's State of the Unionaddress, Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's Hardball, commented that Obama "is post-racial by all appearances" and added, "You know, I forgot he was black tonight for an hour."3
Matthews continued" "You know, he's gone a long way to become a leader of this country and passed so much history in just a year or two. I mean its something we don't even think about. I was watching and I said wait a minute, he's an African America guy in front of a bunch of other white people, and there he is, the president of the United States and we've completely forgotten that tonight. Completely forgotten it. I think it was the scope of his discussion, it was so broad ranging, so in tune with so many problems and aspects and aspects of American life that you don't think that you don't think in terms of the old tribalism and the old ethnicity. It was astounding in that regard, a very subtle fact, its so hard to talk about, maybe I shouldn't even talk about it."4
epic comment back to Apple fan boy haters
Just posted this response to the dude who founded Newsvine.
http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2010/01/never-dupe-your-readers/ Thanks for the feedback Mike. First: Hope everything is going well at MSNBC. I respect what you set
out to accomplish with Newsvine and as I've told you I think it is/was
an interesting experiment and fairly well executed--but perhaps a
little too early. You could say I'm a fan of your work. Second: I don't judge myself by twitter follower count--I think such
things are absurd and I've been fairly clear about that from the
start. Additionally, I never asked to be a "weblebrity" or whatever
folks choose to call folks who get 5x the attention of an average
person online. I simply build products that I think people will enjoy and find
helpful, and that I enjoy building. The 100+ blogs at Weblogs, Inc,
Silicon Alley Reporter, TechCrunch50, This Week in Startups, Mahalo
and Open Angel Forum (to name a few) are all project I took on and
created because I had a passion for the space the folks who would
consume and use the products. Since you've made this personal I will tell you that I try not to
judge myself too much, I try to just be a good person and doing things
I enjoy. When I do take the time to reflect I base my worth on if I'm
a good husband, father, friend, brother, son, teacher, mentor, angel
investor and human. There is a human behind the persona that has
become Jason Calacanis. I certainly do not judge myself on my Twitter count--especially since
half of it was gamed from offing free Nexus One phones and a Mac Book
Air. :-) Getting that out of the way, in all honesty, I didn't think I was
fooling anyone. I actually thought I was making a joke. What you left
out of the tweets above were the ones where I said: a) the iPad had a solar panel for charging ($200-300 in cost)
b) the iPad had an HDTV tuner ($150-250 in cost)
c) the iPad had a DVR (a DVR!!!) ($500 in cost)
d) the iPad had a wireless pad you could lay it on to charge ($300 in cost)
e) the iPad had two cameras front and back so you could do augmented
reality video conferencing ($500 in cost)
f) the iPad had facial recognition and that was how you logged in.
g) the iPad and biometrics on either side where you could login with
your thumbpring and flip through pages ($100-200 in cost)
h) the iPad had a mesh gaming network for playing a custom Farmville
application that let lifestock move from one iPad to another. It was intended to be an absurd joke and 95% of the feedback I was
getting was from folks who were laughing saying it was a brilliant
joke. So, I went to bed and slept well only to wake up to the fact that a
couple of blogs and the Wall Street Journal took my spec and said it
was fact. They didn't look at the other half of the conversation on
twitter where EVERYONE was laughing and joking. If it was a performance, and well, the WSJ didn't see the audience
laughing. They didn't look at the RESPONSES to me from that night. The device I describe above would be well over 7-10 pounds and have at
least $2,000 in parts. The hard drive and memory of that device would
make it a VIDEO GAME LEVEL LAPTOP FROM ALIENWARE! There is no way it
could be designed for $499 in a 1.5 pound package!!! Only a lazy person or someone who was so hopeful and drunk on Steve
Jobs ability to bend the laws of physics and economics would ever
believe this was possible..... or a journalist who was soooooooo
desperate to get page views that they would print an OBVIOUS joke as
reality. ... or perhaps journalist who doesn't think about the laws of physics
and economics. In that way my simple joke that the JesusPad was everything and I that
I was blessed to get one for 10 days before anyone AND in that
position of trust was willing to destroy Steve Jobs' keynote, was SO
ABSURD only a zealot, an idiot or someone playing along would believe. It seems our industry has become filled with Apple zombies who believe
that Steve Jobs can walk on water, and it's obvious that the iPad is
no better than the HP Slate or an HTC running Google's Chrome. In
fact, Bill Gates built better tablets five years ago! Steve Jobs pulled the wool over everyone by making them believe this
product was a revolution, and I inadvertently exposed the fact that
some folks loose all common sense when it comes to Apple products. The Reality Distortion Field is strong!!! That being said, I'm sorry to have designed a device that everyone
wants in the face of Steve Jobs' tablet which, apparently, is
underwhelming when compared to the Jason's Tablet--also known as the
JTab. If you want to pre-order the JTab please send $2,500 to my paypal at
jason at calacanis.com. DISCLAIMER: If you are too stupid to know that
was a joke, and you do send me $2,500 I will donate it to Haiti under
the name of Owa Tagoose Iam. all the best, jason
http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2010/01/never-dupe-your-readers/ Thanks for the feedback Mike. First: Hope everything is going well at MSNBC. I respect what you set
out to accomplish with Newsvine and as I've told you I think it is/was
an interesting experiment and fairly well executed--but perhaps a
little too early. You could say I'm a fan of your work. Second: I don't judge myself by twitter follower count--I think such
things are absurd and I've been fairly clear about that from the
start. Additionally, I never asked to be a "weblebrity" or whatever
folks choose to call folks who get 5x the attention of an average
person online. I simply build products that I think people will enjoy and find
helpful, and that I enjoy building. The 100+ blogs at Weblogs, Inc,
Silicon Alley Reporter, TechCrunch50, This Week in Startups, Mahalo
and Open Angel Forum (to name a few) are all project I took on and
created because I had a passion for the space the folks who would
consume and use the products. Since you've made this personal I will tell you that I try not to
judge myself too much, I try to just be a good person and doing things
I enjoy. When I do take the time to reflect I base my worth on if I'm
a good husband, father, friend, brother, son, teacher, mentor, angel
investor and human. There is a human behind the persona that has
become Jason Calacanis. I certainly do not judge myself on my Twitter count--especially since
half of it was gamed from offing free Nexus One phones and a Mac Book
Air. :-) Getting that out of the way, in all honesty, I didn't think I was
fooling anyone. I actually thought I was making a joke. What you left
out of the tweets above were the ones where I said: a) the iPad had a solar panel for charging ($200-300 in cost)
b) the iPad had an HDTV tuner ($150-250 in cost)
c) the iPad had a DVR (a DVR!!!) ($500 in cost)
d) the iPad had a wireless pad you could lay it on to charge ($300 in cost)
e) the iPad had two cameras front and back so you could do augmented
reality video conferencing ($500 in cost)
f) the iPad had facial recognition and that was how you logged in.
g) the iPad and biometrics on either side where you could login with
your thumbpring and flip through pages ($100-200 in cost)
h) the iPad had a mesh gaming network for playing a custom Farmville
application that let lifestock move from one iPad to another. It was intended to be an absurd joke and 95% of the feedback I was
getting was from folks who were laughing saying it was a brilliant
joke. So, I went to bed and slept well only to wake up to the fact that a
couple of blogs and the Wall Street Journal took my spec and said it
was fact. They didn't look at the other half of the conversation on
twitter where EVERYONE was laughing and joking. If it was a performance, and well, the WSJ didn't see the audience
laughing. They didn't look at the RESPONSES to me from that night. The device I describe above would be well over 7-10 pounds and have at
least $2,000 in parts. The hard drive and memory of that device would
make it a VIDEO GAME LEVEL LAPTOP FROM ALIENWARE! There is no way it
could be designed for $499 in a 1.5 pound package!!! Only a lazy person or someone who was so hopeful and drunk on Steve
Jobs ability to bend the laws of physics and economics would ever
believe this was possible..... or a journalist who was soooooooo
desperate to get page views that they would print an OBVIOUS joke as
reality. ... or perhaps journalist who doesn't think about the laws of physics
and economics. In that way my simple joke that the JesusPad was everything and I that
I was blessed to get one for 10 days before anyone AND in that
position of trust was willing to destroy Steve Jobs' keynote, was SO
ABSURD only a zealot, an idiot or someone playing along would believe. It seems our industry has become filled with Apple zombies who believe
that Steve Jobs can walk on water, and it's obvious that the iPad is
no better than the HP Slate or an HTC running Google's Chrome. In
fact, Bill Gates built better tablets five years ago! Steve Jobs pulled the wool over everyone by making them believe this
product was a revolution, and I inadvertently exposed the fact that
some folks loose all common sense when it comes to Apple products. The Reality Distortion Field is strong!!! That being said, I'm sorry to have designed a device that everyone
wants in the face of Steve Jobs' tablet which, apparently, is
underwhelming when compared to the Jason's Tablet--also known as the
JTab. If you want to pre-order the JTab please send $2,500 to my paypal at
jason at calacanis.com. DISCLAIMER: If you are too stupid to know that
was a joke, and you do send me $2,500 I will donate it to Haiti under
the name of Owa Tagoose Iam. all the best, jason
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Looking for a "Conference producer & social media ninja" for Calacanis Conferences
Friends, I'm looking for a bright, hard working, tech savvy, problem solving
person to help me run events like the Open Angel Forum, TechCrunch50,
This Week in Startups and another event I'm planning. This person
doesn't need to have any experiencing working in event production.
They simply need to be: 1. very detail oriented
2. technically savvy (think spreadsheets, email, setting up a blog,
uploading a video, using social networks, buying a domain name, etc).
3. A/V savvy (or the ability to quickly pick up how microphones, video
cameras, etc. work)
4. great communication skills
5. presentable and personable (i.e. can't be introverted if you need
to greet 25 people at an Open Angel Forum event!)
6. positive, resourceful and fun
7. inquisitive
8. resilient
9. hard working
10. good under pressure (and a very intense boss--me!) This is a great first or second job for someone--out of school is just
fine. $30-40k to start, work directly with me and Tyler. This opportunity is in Santa Monica--NO REMOTE WORKERS (sorry!) Send a cover letter telling Tyler and I about yourself and why you
think you would be good in this role, as well as your resume. Send to: gig@calacanis.com
person to help me run events like the Open Angel Forum, TechCrunch50,
This Week in Startups and another event I'm planning. This person
doesn't need to have any experiencing working in event production.
They simply need to be: 1. very detail oriented
2. technically savvy (think spreadsheets, email, setting up a blog,
uploading a video, using social networks, buying a domain name, etc).
3. A/V savvy (or the ability to quickly pick up how microphones, video
cameras, etc. work)
4. great communication skills
5. presentable and personable (i.e. can't be introverted if you need
to greet 25 people at an Open Angel Forum event!)
6. positive, resourceful and fun
7. inquisitive
8. resilient
9. hard working
10. good under pressure (and a very intense boss--me!) This is a great first or second job for someone--out of school is just
fine. $30-40k to start, work directly with me and Tyler. This opportunity is in Santa Monica--NO REMOTE WORKERS (sorry!) Send a cover letter telling Tyler and I about yourself and why you
think you would be good in this role, as well as your resume. Send to: gig@calacanis.com
My greatest performance ever? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6J9-QLj4vPQ
Thank you.... thank you very much.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
interesting discussion with Allen Stern about Veritcal Managers
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jason Calacanis
Date: Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 10:35 AM
Subject: Re: ?s
To: Allen Stern You're welcome to talk to Lon Harris who is running the Vertical
Manager program any time Allen. He is cced above. On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 10:21 AM, Allen Stern wrote:
> Thanks for the reply - yes, had a few questions - here they are:
> -- how many vertical managers are there currently? Is there a list on the
> Mahalo site? The program is in month three I think and we have nine. We are trying
to add two to four a month and get to 50 in a year or so. > -- how many of the vm are Mahalo staff? Zero. We only have three full-time editorial/community folks at
Mahalo. We are pushing the management of page managers out to our
community. We will just set standards and build tools for them going
forward. > -- when a vm (or page manager) is a Mahalo staff person, do they get a check
> for their earnings or is it retained by Mahalo? Jason seemed to indicate
> previously that the income was retained but I wanted to double check. No, we pay our staff a salary, give them stock options, etc. We have put our staff as VMs and PM on the pages we created internally
since giving these high paying pages to the public who didn't build
them wouldn't make sense. I think the VMs after just two months are making $500 to $2k a month
(in US dollars)... correct Lon? we pay them a minimum of $500 a month and assign them 500 to 1,500
pages each in the first month. and right now the top number of pages
they can manage is 3,000. if your negative spin is we keep the high paying pages for ourselves
that isn't true. We've kept the pages we made internally, but those
are but a few of the top pages. many of the top pages are now owned by
VMs and their PMs. if you want to talk to VM as well i've cced Rob Brown who is doing technology. > -- the amount for a payout is currently $150, correct? yes, we moved it to $150 to accomplish two things: 1. avoid gaming in Answers (where people were doing all kinds of crazy
things to make money).
2. avoid gaming on page management (where people were starting to do
crazy things) This change has had zero impact on the core members because they can
easily hit this in a month or two. The only people it really effected
were the people gaming the system. we don't want short term folks in the system who are creating multiple
accounts to award themselves best answer (which was starting to
happen). best j
From: Jason Calacanis
Date: Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 10:35 AM
Subject: Re: ?s
To: Allen Stern You're welcome to talk to Lon Harris who is running the Vertical
Manager program any time Allen. He is cced above. On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 10:21 AM, Allen Stern wrote:
> Thanks for the reply - yes, had a few questions - here they are:
> -- how many vertical managers are there currently? Is there a list on the
> Mahalo site? The program is in month three I think and we have nine. We are trying
to add two to four a month and get to 50 in a year or so. > -- how many of the vm are Mahalo staff? Zero. We only have three full-time editorial/community folks at
Mahalo. We are pushing the management of page managers out to our
community. We will just set standards and build tools for them going
forward. > -- when a vm (or page manager) is a Mahalo staff person, do they get a check
> for their earnings or is it retained by Mahalo? Jason seemed to indicate
> previously that the income was retained but I wanted to double check. No, we pay our staff a salary, give them stock options, etc. We have put our staff as VMs and PM on the pages we created internally
since giving these high paying pages to the public who didn't build
them wouldn't make sense. I think the VMs after just two months are making $500 to $2k a month
(in US dollars)... correct Lon? we pay them a minimum of $500 a month and assign them 500 to 1,500
pages each in the first month. and right now the top number of pages
they can manage is 3,000. if your negative spin is we keep the high paying pages for ourselves
that isn't true. We've kept the pages we made internally, but those
are but a few of the top pages. many of the top pages are now owned by
VMs and their PMs. if you want to talk to VM as well i've cced Rob Brown who is doing technology. > -- the amount for a payout is currently $150, correct? yes, we moved it to $150 to accomplish two things: 1. avoid gaming in Answers (where people were doing all kinds of crazy
things to make money).
2. avoid gaming on page management (where people were starting to do
crazy things) This change has had zero impact on the core members because they can
easily hit this in a month or two. The only people it really effected
were the people gaming the system. we don't want short term folks in the system who are creating multiple
accounts to award themselves best answer (which was starting to
happen). best j
Monday, January 25, 2010
my thank you email to @aaronwall for the free SEO advice: great SEO, great guy!
Aaron's a great SEO and he's been giving me free advice for years... really instrumental in helping Mahalo grow! If you are in the need of SEO talent i suggest http://www.wolf-howl.com/ and www.seobook.com!!!
best j
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jason Calacanis <jason@calacanis.com>
Date: Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 11:41 AM
Subject: thanks!
To: aaron wall thanks for the long post... it's an important discussion.
From: Jason Calacanis <jason@calacanis.com>
Date: Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 11:41 AM
Subject: thanks!
To: aaron wall thanks for the long post... it's an important discussion.
while you did point out that we have these stub pages like wikipedia, the fact is they are < 1% of our traffic and .1% of our revenue. We used to no-index them and we accidentally took that off when we moved to Mahalo 3.0 i think.
it actually HURTS us to have these pages I'm told by multiple SEOs of note because they are not original content and google doesn't rank them AND they spread our page rank.
from what i'm told we're better off building more of our how to pages, walkthroughs and Q&A pages. those are getting us 90%+ of our traffic and revenue.
can you confirm this is a better strategy? i do respect your thoughts on SEO... even though i really don't understand SEO that well.
in fact, the only thing i'm really good at is finding great writers and building a brand. if you search for "VIDEO GAME walkthrough" you'll find we're second only to IGN in 30 short months because our pages are better. same thing with how to articles... we're better than ehow and only second to them in ranking.
any other tips you can give us? really appreciate it pal!
i guess SEO is not BS!!! :-)
best j
---------------------
Jason McCabe Calacanis
CEO, http://www.Mahalo.com
Office: 310-593-6134 / Mobile: 310-456-4900
Blog: http://www.calacanis.com
Mailing list: http://bit.ly/jasonslist
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jason
AOL IM/Skype: jasoncalacanis
Jason McCabe Calacanis
CEO, http://www.Mahalo.com
Office: 310-593-6134 / Mobile: 310-456-4900
Blog: http://www.calacanis.com
Mailing list: http://bit.ly/jasonslist
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jason
AOL IM/Skype: jasoncalacanis
About 14 posts on the Comscore "black mail" program--any missing?
Mike Hirshland / VCMike's Blog:
Comscore, Calacanis, Quantcast etc. — Unless you've been asleep or unconscious the last few days, you no doubt have been following the brouhaha kicked off by Jason Calacanis's angry rant against Comscore and its business practices. The Silicon Alley Insider joined the fray with a post entitled …
Discussion:
Thanks:
berecruitedRELATED:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:Jason Calacanis Punches Comscore In The Face. …
Discussion:
Mark Walsh / MediaPost: Dust-Up Flares Over New ComScore System
David Dalka / Online Marketing Management Strategy: Marketing Channel Business Strategy Reallocation Management: Where Are You?
Alex Wilhelm / The Next Web: comScore, Calacanis, Wilson, And TechCrunch Oh My!
Mathew Ingram / GigaOM: Calacanis Takes on comScore — and Fred Wilson
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:Comscore's Bogus Logic For Its Blackmail Fee: We Don't Make That Much Money
Sunday, January 24, 2010
SWEET VIDEO: Jeff and Erin's Epic Wedding Trailer #epic
Fairly epic... Jeff & Erin's Epic Wedding Trailer
http://www.mahalo.com/jeff-erins-epic-wedding-trailer
http://www.mahalo.com/jeff-erins-epic-wedding-trailer
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Why We Should Boycott ComScore (and *perhaps* why traders should short their stock)
From my email newsletter today.... if you want these first, sign up for it! ---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jason Calacanis
Date: Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 11:00 AM
Subject: Why We Should Boycott ComScore (and *perhaps* why traders
should short their stock)
Jason's List: Why We Should Boycott ComScore (and *perhaps* why
traders should short their stock)
Location: Brentwood, Ca 90049
Time: 10:45AM
Listening To: Rilo Kiley's "Silver Lining" http://bit.ly/SJIj
Members: About 19,000 of you
Signup: http://www.bit.ly/jasonslist
Angel investments: 5
Bulldogs: 2 http://bit.ly/6sF1WD
=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-= Comscore is the technology industry's biggest bully, and today I'm
calling for an industry-wide boycott of their services. I'm asking journalist and bloggers to stop covering their stats, I'm
asking advertisers to not use their services, and finally, I'm asking
startup companies to not support their new and widely reported on
"$10,000 to get your stats correct" extortion ring. If I was a stock trader I would short the stock--but I'm not--so I
won't (I keep my money in bonds and angel investments for the record).
Also, if you own Comscore shares, I'm not going to tell you that you
should sell them, but if I were an analyst--and I'm not--I would
probably tell folks to sell every share they had, and as quickly as
possible. Additionally, I'm asking Comscore to drop their "pay for correct
stats" model in the next ten days. Let's get into why.
Comscore's Reign of Terror
------------------------
For over a decade, I've railed against our industry's leading metrics
company ComScore with little result. It all started when I was a journalist in the 90s for the Silicon
Alley Reporter. I listened to company after company from Silicon Alley
to Silicon Valley complain about how ComScore's method of counting
traffic websites, via a sample of users, was incorrect. People couldn't understand why the internet industry, with it's
ability to track traffic perfectly, would ever adopt the failed
sample-based methods used on television and radio. Comscore's ideas
were antiquated and unnecessary. Entrepreneurs would show me their internal stats, which were typically
three to five times larger than Comscore's numbers, and beg me to
correct them in the Silicon Alley Reporter. However, I noticed a pattern: the big companies didn't complain about Comscore. Why? Well, from what multiple people shared with me, you simply had to
follow the money. According to these folks it was an unspoken truth
for years that if you paid Comscore they fixed your numbers, and if
you were a small company and didn't, well, you suffered. Comscore
would probably deny this, but their recent "pay to play" product shows
their true stripes.
They screwed me at Weblogs, Inc.
------------------------
It wasn't until I started Weblogs, Inc. that I really felt the sting
of not participating in the Comscore protection racket. You see,
advertisers love Comscore and they make advertising buys based on it. Our small, but growing blogs, were under reported month after month
and Comscore basically told me to pound salt when I complained. It
cost me money, and I promised myself that if I could ever support
another service that wasn't based on payola I would. Here you can see a smoking gun from 2005 when Comscore did a "study"
on blogs with Gawker Media as a sponsor. Interestingly, Gawker's blogs
did really well in the study. The only problem was that Comscore's
numbers were different than the SiteMeter traffic that Gawker and
Weblogs Inc. were publishing at the time. Denton privately admitted to me he support Comscore because he had to
because of their reputation in the advertising industry. He thought I
should bite the bullet as well and get in bed with the bullies. Not my
style, sorry. [[ Some links from 2005 Comscore: Show us the data or get out of Dodge
http://bit.ly/4I7S6i and ClickZ: http://www.clickz.com/3526851 - Fred
Wilson throws me under the bus: http://bit.ly/8BpFnh ]] I publicly complained about Comscore but no one would really listen.
Actually Jeff Jarvis did support me: http://bit.ly/8zW0GF My good friend Fred Wilson, who had invested in the firm, turned away
and watched the bullies he invested in pummel me when I complained
about Comscore. Fred is outspoken and an advocate of startups--except
with Comscore. He's turned a blind eye while letting his huge venture
return in Comscore color his objectivity. In fact, it must be obvious
to Fred that Comscore is, in fact, holding back his other startup
investments by extorting money from them! Fred's been an amazing supporter of mine over the years, but I've
never been able to get over the fact that he invested in and supported
these guys. Fred's continued support of this company is unconscionable
at this point. He needs to come out and say that Comscore charging
$10,000 for this product is a pure shake down. Do it Fred... you know you want to! :-)
ComScore Tries to Buy Me Off
------------------------
This summer the tough guys at Comscore approached me with a
clandestine deal after I continued to publicly complain about their
methods. The message was clear: if I stopped criticizing them and
publicly supported their server data measurement program they would
not charge me. The $10,000 it would cost a year for this service would
be free for me if I threw my fellow entrepreneurs under the bus. Their email to me included something out of the a Sopranos episode:
"Normally there is a cost to implement, but in this case we will
gladly waive the charge if you are interested." Yeah, and if you're
not interested perhaps you would like to come on a fishing trip with
us this weekend. You bastards think that after a *decade* of me trying to stop your
extortion you can by me off by simply waiving some fees? I could
easily pay the $10,000 fee today but I will never give you guys a
dime. I will remember what you did to me when I was coming up forever. I'd rather lose half my revenue from advertising as Mahalo grows from
a top 1,000 site (2007), to the top 400 sites (2008) and now a top 200
site (2009), and eventually even a top 50 site I hope (2011?)--than
give you even one ounce of my support. I wrote back: "You guys are evil for charging companies--I would never
support you. Quantcast and Google are going to crush you guys.... And
I'm telling everyone I know to support Quantcast." They never contacted me again.
Comscore formalizes their extortion ring
------------------------
This week you may have read over at the excellent "All Things D" that
Comscore is now willing to do real metrics on your website if you give
them $10,000 a year. They claim this is to pay for their servers.
More: http://bit.ly/6Fqrhe This after they spent the last decade criticizing the direct
measurement methods of their competitors like Quantcast and Google
Analytics as being flawed! Now they say pixel tracking--actual
measurement on the server side--is the best method. What a bunch of
slim buckets. Could it be that enough publishers and advertisers have told you to go
f-- yourself in the past year? Could it be that Quantcast has a product that is 100x better than your
service and it's FREE? Could it be that Compete.com is secretly testing a server-side testing
method like Quantcast's and is about to kick your ass? From where I sit, this is Comscore's desperate Hail Mary pass to try
and save their dying protection racket. Comscore has ZERO value when
Google Analytics, Compete.com and Quantcast allow you to publicly and
freely track your stats.
Bullies, Ethics & Your Part
------------------------
As a kid growing up in Brooklyn, I learned that when you or your
friends were being bullied there was really only one solution to the
problem: punch the bully directly in the face as hard as you can the
second they approached you. Like really, the second they come at
you--the second the first word comes out of their mouth--punch them in
the face. Don't let them even finish their sentence. If they say "I
want your milk money" your fist should make contact right around the
"want" mark. BANG! At a young age I tested this technique and it resulted in a couple of
multi-day suspensions from school and black eyes, but it is a
life-long strategy for success that has never failed me. Do not let
yourself or your friends get bullied--ever. Even if you get your ass
kicked, at least you got your shot in and you held your ground. When someone from Comscore approaches, you should tell them to go
hell. (Note: do not literally punch them in the face--I'm not
advocating physical violence here, I'm advocating voting with your
dollar.) I put up a good fight for a decade but made little progress and
frankly got my ass kicked by Comscore in the Weblogs, Inc. days.
However, their obnoxious behavior has finally been publicly exposed.
This means that we--as an industry--can finally run this bully out of
town. Again, here is what I'm asking for in the Comscore Boycott. Feel free
to republish this article in whole at your blog.
The Comscore Boycott: Play Your Part!
======================
1. Startups: Do NOT pay a single penny to Comscore--ever.
2. Startups who are getting this program for free (I suspect a good
number): Opt out and tell Comscore to f-- themselves.
3. Press & Bloggers: Please do not run Comscore's inaccurate numbers,
and please expose their extortion ring.
4. Advertisers: Do not use Comscore to plan your media buys: use the
free and more accurate Quantcast.
5. Google: Please release your version Comscore killer (based on
Quantcast's model), or better yet PLEASE BUY QUANTCAST!
6. Compete.com: Please release your Comscore killer.
7. Stock traders & Analysts: Please think deeply about the potential
revenue destruction that Comscore could be facing.
8. Fred Wilson: publicly state that you do not agree with ComScore's
mafia-like methods.
9. Republish this email at your blog.
10. If you have information on Comscore that should be exposed send it
to me in confidence (say anonymous up top)
To My "Friends" at Comscore
---------------------------------------
You know I'm right. As such, I'm asking for complete and unconditional surrender. Make
your tracking pixel program 100% free in the next 10 days or the
boycott will continue. If you're a current or former executive at Comscore and you have an
opinion on this please send me your thoughts in confidence, and I will
republish them to the list without your name. If you're a current employee who can't deal with this any more, please
add me on LinkedIn and ask for a LinkedIn introduction to the Google
Analytics, Compete.com or Quantcast teams. I will gladly forward
talented people from Comscore on to companies I think are more
ethical. All the best, Jason
You can find me here:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
http://www.twitter.com/jason
http://www.thisweekinstartups.com
http://www.facebook.com/jasoncalacanis
http://www.blippy.com/jason (angel investor)
http://www.calacanis.com
http://user.gdgt.com/jasoncalacanis/ (angel investor)
http://gowalla.com/users/jason (angel investor)
http://www.challengepost.com/jason-calacanis (angel investor)
http://www.causecast.org/member/jasoncalacanis (advisor)
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Calacanis (65% correct!)
Copy editing of Jason's List: Jennifer Engevik http://www.jenniferengevik.com Unsubscribe: just hit reply with unsubscribe in the subject line or
visit http://www.tinyurl.com/jasonslist
Subscribe: http://www.bit.ly/jasonslist Jason Calacanis
902 Colorado Avenue
Santa Monica, CA 90401
Office Phone: 310-593-6134
email: jason@calacanis.com
From: Jason Calacanis
Date: Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 11:00 AM
Subject: Why We Should Boycott ComScore (and *perhaps* why traders
should short their stock)
Jason's List: Why We Should Boycott ComScore (and *perhaps* why
traders should short their stock)
Location: Brentwood, Ca 90049
Time: 10:45AM
Listening To: Rilo Kiley's "Silver Lining" http://bit.ly/SJIj
Members: About 19,000 of you
Signup: http://www.bit.ly/jasonslist
Angel investments: 5
Bulldogs: 2 http://bit.ly/6sF1WD
=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-= Comscore is the technology industry's biggest bully, and today I'm
calling for an industry-wide boycott of their services. I'm asking journalist and bloggers to stop covering their stats, I'm
asking advertisers to not use their services, and finally, I'm asking
startup companies to not support their new and widely reported on
"$10,000 to get your stats correct" extortion ring. If I was a stock trader I would short the stock--but I'm not--so I
won't (I keep my money in bonds and angel investments for the record).
Also, if you own Comscore shares, I'm not going to tell you that you
should sell them, but if I were an analyst--and I'm not--I would
probably tell folks to sell every share they had, and as quickly as
possible. Additionally, I'm asking Comscore to drop their "pay for correct
stats" model in the next ten days. Let's get into why.
Comscore's Reign of Terror
------------------------
For over a decade, I've railed against our industry's leading metrics
company ComScore with little result. It all started when I was a journalist in the 90s for the Silicon
Alley Reporter. I listened to company after company from Silicon Alley
to Silicon Valley complain about how ComScore's method of counting
traffic websites, via a sample of users, was incorrect. People couldn't understand why the internet industry, with it's
ability to track traffic perfectly, would ever adopt the failed
sample-based methods used on television and radio. Comscore's ideas
were antiquated and unnecessary. Entrepreneurs would show me their internal stats, which were typically
three to five times larger than Comscore's numbers, and beg me to
correct them in the Silicon Alley Reporter. However, I noticed a pattern: the big companies didn't complain about Comscore. Why? Well, from what multiple people shared with me, you simply had to
follow the money. According to these folks it was an unspoken truth
for years that if you paid Comscore they fixed your numbers, and if
you were a small company and didn't, well, you suffered. Comscore
would probably deny this, but their recent "pay to play" product shows
their true stripes.
They screwed me at Weblogs, Inc.
------------------------
It wasn't until I started Weblogs, Inc. that I really felt the sting
of not participating in the Comscore protection racket. You see,
advertisers love Comscore and they make advertising buys based on it. Our small, but growing blogs, were under reported month after month
and Comscore basically told me to pound salt when I complained. It
cost me money, and I promised myself that if I could ever support
another service that wasn't based on payola I would. Here you can see a smoking gun from 2005 when Comscore did a "study"
on blogs with Gawker Media as a sponsor. Interestingly, Gawker's blogs
did really well in the study. The only problem was that Comscore's
numbers were different than the SiteMeter traffic that Gawker and
Weblogs Inc. were publishing at the time. Denton privately admitted to me he support Comscore because he had to
because of their reputation in the advertising industry. He thought I
should bite the bullet as well and get in bed with the bullies. Not my
style, sorry. [[ Some links from 2005 Comscore: Show us the data or get out of Dodge
http://bit.ly/4I7S6i and ClickZ: http://www.clickz.com/3526851 - Fred
Wilson throws me under the bus: http://bit.ly/8BpFnh ]] I publicly complained about Comscore but no one would really listen.
Actually Jeff Jarvis did support me: http://bit.ly/8zW0GF My good friend Fred Wilson, who had invested in the firm, turned away
and watched the bullies he invested in pummel me when I complained
about Comscore. Fred is outspoken and an advocate of startups--except
with Comscore. He's turned a blind eye while letting his huge venture
return in Comscore color his objectivity. In fact, it must be obvious
to Fred that Comscore is, in fact, holding back his other startup
investments by extorting money from them! Fred's been an amazing supporter of mine over the years, but I've
never been able to get over the fact that he invested in and supported
these guys. Fred's continued support of this company is unconscionable
at this point. He needs to come out and say that Comscore charging
$10,000 for this product is a pure shake down. Do it Fred... you know you want to! :-)
ComScore Tries to Buy Me Off
------------------------
This summer the tough guys at Comscore approached me with a
clandestine deal after I continued to publicly complain about their
methods. The message was clear: if I stopped criticizing them and
publicly supported their server data measurement program they would
not charge me. The $10,000 it would cost a year for this service would
be free for me if I threw my fellow entrepreneurs under the bus. Their email to me included something out of the a Sopranos episode:
"Normally there is a cost to implement, but in this case we will
gladly waive the charge if you are interested." Yeah, and if you're
not interested perhaps you would like to come on a fishing trip with
us this weekend. You bastards think that after a *decade* of me trying to stop your
extortion you can by me off by simply waiving some fees? I could
easily pay the $10,000 fee today but I will never give you guys a
dime. I will remember what you did to me when I was coming up forever. I'd rather lose half my revenue from advertising as Mahalo grows from
a top 1,000 site (2007), to the top 400 sites (2008) and now a top 200
site (2009), and eventually even a top 50 site I hope (2011?)--than
give you even one ounce of my support. I wrote back: "You guys are evil for charging companies--I would never
support you. Quantcast and Google are going to crush you guys.... And
I'm telling everyone I know to support Quantcast." They never contacted me again.
Comscore formalizes their extortion ring
------------------------
This week you may have read over at the excellent "All Things D" that
Comscore is now willing to do real metrics on your website if you give
them $10,000 a year. They claim this is to pay for their servers.
More: http://bit.ly/6Fqrhe This after they spent the last decade criticizing the direct
measurement methods of their competitors like Quantcast and Google
Analytics as being flawed! Now they say pixel tracking--actual
measurement on the server side--is the best method. What a bunch of
slim buckets. Could it be that enough publishers and advertisers have told you to go
f-- yourself in the past year? Could it be that Quantcast has a product that is 100x better than your
service and it's FREE? Could it be that Compete.com is secretly testing a server-side testing
method like Quantcast's and is about to kick your ass? From where I sit, this is Comscore's desperate Hail Mary pass to try
and save their dying protection racket. Comscore has ZERO value when
Google Analytics, Compete.com and Quantcast allow you to publicly and
freely track your stats.
Bullies, Ethics & Your Part
------------------------
As a kid growing up in Brooklyn, I learned that when you or your
friends were being bullied there was really only one solution to the
problem: punch the bully directly in the face as hard as you can the
second they approached you. Like really, the second they come at
you--the second the first word comes out of their mouth--punch them in
the face. Don't let them even finish their sentence. If they say "I
want your milk money" your fist should make contact right around the
"want" mark. BANG! At a young age I tested this technique and it resulted in a couple of
multi-day suspensions from school and black eyes, but it is a
life-long strategy for success that has never failed me. Do not let
yourself or your friends get bullied--ever. Even if you get your ass
kicked, at least you got your shot in and you held your ground. When someone from Comscore approaches, you should tell them to go
hell. (Note: do not literally punch them in the face--I'm not
advocating physical violence here, I'm advocating voting with your
dollar.) I put up a good fight for a decade but made little progress and
frankly got my ass kicked by Comscore in the Weblogs, Inc. days.
However, their obnoxious behavior has finally been publicly exposed.
This means that we--as an industry--can finally run this bully out of
town. Again, here is what I'm asking for in the Comscore Boycott. Feel free
to republish this article in whole at your blog.
The Comscore Boycott: Play Your Part!
======================
1. Startups: Do NOT pay a single penny to Comscore--ever.
2. Startups who are getting this program for free (I suspect a good
number): Opt out and tell Comscore to f-- themselves.
3. Press & Bloggers: Please do not run Comscore's inaccurate numbers,
and please expose their extortion ring.
4. Advertisers: Do not use Comscore to plan your media buys: use the
free and more accurate Quantcast.
5. Google: Please release your version Comscore killer (based on
Quantcast's model), or better yet PLEASE BUY QUANTCAST!
6. Compete.com: Please release your Comscore killer.
7. Stock traders & Analysts: Please think deeply about the potential
revenue destruction that Comscore could be facing.
8. Fred Wilson: publicly state that you do not agree with ComScore's
mafia-like methods.
9. Republish this email at your blog.
10. If you have information on Comscore that should be exposed send it
to me in confidence (say anonymous up top)
To My "Friends" at Comscore
---------------------------------------
You know I'm right. As such, I'm asking for complete and unconditional surrender. Make
your tracking pixel program 100% free in the next 10 days or the
boycott will continue. If you're a current or former executive at Comscore and you have an
opinion on this please send me your thoughts in confidence, and I will
republish them to the list without your name. If you're a current employee who can't deal with this any more, please
add me on LinkedIn and ask for a LinkedIn introduction to the Google
Analytics, Compete.com or Quantcast teams. I will gladly forward
talented people from Comscore on to companies I think are more
ethical. All the best, Jason
You can find me here:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
http://www.twitter.com/jason
http://www.thisweekinstartups.com
http://www.facebook.com/jasoncalacanis
http://www.blippy.com/jason (angel investor)
http://www.calacanis.com
http://user.gdgt.com/jasoncalacanis/ (angel investor)
http://gowalla.com/users/jason (angel investor)
http://www.challengepost.com/jason-calacanis (angel investor)
http://www.causecast.org/member/jasoncalacanis (advisor)
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Calacanis (65% correct!)
Copy editing of Jason's List: Jennifer Engevik http://www.jenniferengevik.com Unsubscribe: just hit reply with unsubscribe in the subject line or
visit http://www.tinyurl.com/jasonslist
Subscribe: http://www.bit.ly/jasonslist Jason Calacanis
902 Colorado Avenue
Santa Monica, CA 90401
Office Phone: 310-593-6134
email: jason@calacanis.com
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