EPIC FLAME WAR with @DCurtis of @fark fame!

JCAL: I love a good flame war.... :-) 

----------

Question from Dustin Curtis post to a Q&A site: What were the names and topics of the 85 blogs that made up Weblogs Inc when it was sold to AOL in 2005?

-------

Answer from Jason: I can't really remember, but generally speaking there were 15 in the video games space (joystiq, xboxfanboy, playstationfanboy, wowinsider, etc), 20 in tech (wifi, wimax, etc), and a bunch of nice stuff like divester and cardsquad which they shut down. 

I think AOL narrow it down to the top 20 winners and tripled down on those (things like engadget, engadgethd, engadget wireless, autoblog, autoblog green, joystiq, tvsquad, gadling, cinematical). 

Why do you ask? 6:26pm on Friday

------

Dustin follow insults: I noticed that This Week In has a lot of new lower quality shows which seem to follow the formula of pandering to people interested in specific niches (Cars, Poker, Video Games). I was under the impression that Weblogs, Inc had only a few very high quality blogs, so I thought this was a strange strategy shift for you. But, it turns out, you did the same thing back then. 

Actually, you seem to use the see-what-sticks formula in everything you do... and Mahalo is the biggest see-what-sticks product anyone could make.

Dustin Curtis 10:44pm on Friday

--------

Jason's smackdown response: 

Thanks DC! 

A compliment to be sure, especially coming from the web's most famous curator of mammaries and time-wasting news links!
However, I'm compelled to correct your superficial take on my strategy. 

Now, I know that your perspective is that of someone who has not had as much success. To the best of my knowledge your biggest accomplishment to date is Foobies.com correct? 
:-)

I mean, you run a site about boobies and you can't break into the top 1,000 sites? Really? 
http://www.quantcast.com/foobies.com 

I'm absolutely certain that if you challenged me to create a website about women's breasts I could break the top 1,000 websites in six months, and the top 500 in 12. You've had, what, seven years?

Anyway, given what must be a very frusting track record for you, I can appreciate your flawed and dismissive "see-what-sticks" perception. 

The success of my teams is not as random or lazy as it seems to you. My brand-building process is based on seven factors including:

1. OVER-SERVING the UNDER-SERVED!
Defining what verticals are currently under-serviced, and over-servicing them. Autoblog Green and Silicon Alley Reporter are examples of this. 
Before those brands existed there were few places to go deep on EVs and New York-based internet startups. 

2. ENABLING the UNDER-SUPPORTED
I've studied Loren Michaels, the creator of Saturday Night Live, and developed a technique which helps me quickly find passionate content creators who have been held back, sabotaged or simply not given a proper platform. 
For example, TechCrunch50--a brand I created--was based on the fact that Mike Arrington had never hosted conferences before. He needed a conference platform, and together we made one of the top five conferences in the technology space INSTANTLY. 

Over three years we made many millions in profits, but more importantly we launched hundreds of amazing companies including fitbit, mint, powerset, yammer, red beacon, etc. 

Of course, Mike shut the conference down, but that's whole different story. :-

Another example: there are 35 hosts at ThisWeekIn.com after only six months. They are collectively getting millions of views and the networking is making $1M a year already. Those hosts are totally under-appreciated and have largely gotten little to no airtime by mainstream media--with the obvious exception of Kevin Pollak (my partner in ThisWeekin.com--yes, that was a name drop), who has been in countless movies.

3. EASY to LOVE BRANDS
This is something that you're dismissing/missing as well. I've got a really good system for creating and developing legendary brands. 

This is includes everything from naming, domain-ing, logos, PR, marketing, social, etc. 

The list of brands is getting really long: Silicon Alley Reporter, Engadget, Autoblog, TechCrunch50, LAUNCH.IS (my new newsletter, coming soon!), Open Angel Forum, Cinematical, Gadling, Luxist, Mahalo, TVSquad, etc. 

4. WILL DISCLOSE in my email: www.jasonnation.com 
5. WILL DISCLOSE in my email: www.jasonnation.com
6. WILL DISCLOSE in my email: www.jasonnation.com
7. WILL DISCLOSE in my email: www.jasonnation.com

It's not random DUDE!.... it's very, very strategic. 

Thanks for poking me... you got my juices flowing and I'm going to take this and expand it into a www.jasonnation.com newsletter piece! 

Good luck developing your soft-core/adult sites, and be thankful my repressive Christian upbringing precludes me from operating in your verticals, because my worst ideas would trounce your life's work in moments.

all the best,

Jason

   

Jason on Twitter Mahalo.com This Week in Startups