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Tag: Jason Calacanis

  • Uber Built A Very Anti-Fragile Business, Says Jason Calacanis

    Uber Built A Very Anti-Fragile Business, Says Jason Calacanis

    “Uber built a very anti-fragile business in regards to having the Eats business and having the Rides business,” says early Uber investor Jason Calacanis. “When the Ride’s business went down that kind of indicates people are staying home. When they stay home they use Uber Eats and increasingly Drizly, Cornershop, and Postmates. Watching the Uber team take on this challenge of the pandemic year has been really impressive.”

    Early Uber investor Jason Calacanis says that unlike Lyft, Uber built a very anti-fragile business with the combination of Eats and Rides and has become relentlessly focused:

    Uber Built A Very Anti-Fragile Business

    What we’re really going to see here is that Uber built a very anti-fragile business in regards to having the Eats business and having the Rides business. When the Ride’s business went down that kind of indicates people are staying home. When they stay home they use Uber Eats and increasingly Drizly, Cornershop, and Postmates. People are ordering groceries. Watching the Uber team take on this challenge of the pandemic year has been really impressive.

    It reminds me a lot of Disney and how they got focused around Disney+ as the center of the organization. They looked at what was happening in the pandemic and said parks are great, merch is great, movies are great, let’s just put everything into Disney+ and accelerate that. Look what happened to that company. I’ve got to give Dara Khosrowshahi a lot of credit. He got rid of a lot of the noise like self-driving cars which are a multi-decade kind of vision. He sold off the places where they weren’t going to be in first, second, or even third place. He did JVs and sold off those businesses like Russia and China, etc. That’s well documented.

    The Space Can’t Have 50 Players Losing Money

    They found a new really inspiring footing which is if Amazon is two-day delivery going to one-day, Uber’s is one-hour delivery going to 10-minute delivery. That is Travis Kalanick’s original vision for Uber. When I met with him when he was building the company and I was the third or fourth investor his vision was this is a logistic company. We took atoms in the world made them bits on the internet. Now we’re going to take bits on your phone, an app, and we’re going to move atoms in the real world. That was his original pitch. Here we are in decade two where I’m still own the same shares I’ve had since I bought them for a penny or whatever back in 2008 or 2009. I remain super bullish. I have a huge position in Uber and I’m going to hold it for the next decade.

    It’s fairly obvious that there are acquisitions and consolidation that need to happen in the space in order for it to be profitable. The space can’t have 50 players losing money. We’ve watched Lyft, Postmates, Doordash, and everybody, say that we’re going to have to charge what this product is worth. We’re going to have to stop burning money. There’s no free VC money. The public markets are not down with lose money forever and grow. I think we found a happy medium here between what public market investors want, profits, and what private market investors want, growth.

    Uber Has Become Relentlessly Focused

    I think Dara has done an exceptional job. Some things will come from acquisitions but most of it has to be just relentless execution and focus. That is the inspiring part of what happened here. Uber has become relentlessly focused. Things that were coming in 10 or 20 years like self-driving in all likelihood will be a commodity business. In 10 or 20 years there’ll be five companies who have that technology. VTOLs are very fascinating and very interesting, but again that’s probably seven, eight, nine, or ten years off as a very niche product.

    Uber Built A Very Anti-Fragile Business, Says Jason Calacanis
  • Box CEO: I’m A Pretty Annoying Founder

    Box CEO: I’m A Pretty Annoying Founder

    Box co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie recently appeared on the Jason Calacanis podcast, This Week In Startups, where he talked about being annoying and stubborn:

    I’m a pretty annoying founder. I’m very stubborn and very steadfast. Sort of this is my very strongly held opinion and belief and I’m gonna run into a wall to prove it out. That has certain characteristics that can be annoying at times I’m sure both at the investor level as well as for anybody that is working with me. I’ve been able to tone it down over the years and control it more and contain it. I think it’s not causing probably as much annoyance.

    You have to be stubborn and right is the key. Stubborn and wrong means new job. There’s a Venn diagram of stubborn and right and you want to be right in that target zone. I look back when when I was 20, 21, or 22 and learning this trade and there were plenty of times where I was stubborn and wrong where maybe I took too long to pivot.

    My co-founder was telling me we’ve got to go enterprise probably for three to six months earlier than we actually did. What are three to six months in compounding terms? I don’t know. Maybe we’d be 20 percent bigger now as a result of if I had not been so stubborn at that stage and not seeing the information in the way that he was? That can just be sometimes an annoying pattern that people run into.

    Box CEO: I’m A Pretty Annoying Founder
  • In Silicon Valley, the Entire Conversation Is Why Am I Here?

    In Silicon Valley, the Entire Conversation Is Why Am I Here?

    Tech visionary Jason Calacanis, in an interview on CNBC, says that California and Silicon Valley are doing everything they can to get rid of great companies like Telsa:

    It seems like they’re singling Elon Musk out for some reason which is a really stupid mistake on the part of California. Elon Musk is a once-in-a-generation entrepreneur and the products he makes are second to none. They’re the category killers and category redefiners. At the end of the day what we do in investing in companies here in Silicon Valley and what you do in making bets on the public markets is about world-class products and services. This is the world-class product in the automotive space and it’s better than anything the incumbents have.

    California is doing every they can everything they can in terms of taxes and in terms of regulation to get great companies out of here. In Silicon Valley right now the entire conversation is why am I here? Why am I paying these prices? Why am I dealing with dysfunctional government on the local level and on the state level? People are looking at Texas, Nevada, Florida, and Tokyo. People want out of this town. This a very real trend.

  • If People Can Ride the Subway We Can Open Factories, Says Jason Calacanis

    If People Can Ride the Subway We Can Open Factories, Says Jason Calacanis

    “If people can ride the subway and if people can go to Trader Joe’s and pack into all these different places we can start to open factories,” says legendary tech entrepreneur Jason Calacanis during an interview on CNBC:

    When we look at the issues around reopening it’s very confusing for people running businesses today and I think for Americans generally. We’re not allowed to go to the beach and we’re not allowed to play golf but we can take the subway. This is the incredible failure of our government from the federal level down to the local level to not be able to give basic instructions and to have a clear voice.

    Somehow this has turned into a political issue which is the worst of all outcomes. You’re a Republican right-wing person if you want to go back to work. On the left if you let people go back to work you’re committing murder. It’s ridiculous. We have to take a much more measured thoughtful approach to let people go back to work who want to. I understand people are scared people and they can opt-out of this.

    We’ve got a lot of people who work behind keyboards, some of them in the media, who really want to tell people they can’t go back to work when they have a six-figure job clicking keys on a keyboard. It’s not very realistic. Certainly, if people can ride the subway and if people can go to Trader Joe’s and pack into all these different places we can start to open factories.

    If People Can Ride the Subway We Can Open Factories, Says Jason Calacanis
  • EmployeeXM – The “Coolest” and “Most Sophisticated” Employee Experience Product

    EmployeeXM – The “Coolest” and “Most Sophisticated” Employee Experience Product

    “There’s a gap between what they think is happening and really what’s going on,” says Qualtrics CEO & Co-Founder Ryan Smith. “So we said, hey, we’re going to go hard into developing the coolest, easiest, and most sophisticated employee experience product (EmployeeXM). We’re going to build that and we’re going to tie it together with the customer experience.”

    Ryan Smith, CEO & Co-Founder of Qualtrics, discusses the genesis of Qualtrics and how it has evolved into a sophisticated and integral platform for the enterprise in an extensive interview with Jason Calacanis:

    We View Ourselves As a System Of Action

    In the beginning, it was very much around being able to collect data, kind of being on the front end of that. You were able to collect data. You were able to put it into an analytical system and then you were able to report on it. Because of that, we were kind of branded as this survey platform for a long time. I’d say over the last eight to ten years all the survey is a form. There’s a form engine that allows you to do anything you could ever want to do with a form. A form can be through text, a form can be through a chatbot, it can be through anything. Then there’s an analytical platform and then there’s a reporting platform.

    A lot of our investment has been into actioning. We view ourselves as a system of action. How do you actually gather data that doesn’t exist? What experience management is — most organizations are in a world where they’ve resigned to the fact that they have all the data that they need. From our standpoint and what we see it’s the opposite. We’ve got operational systems that are telling us what’s happened. But the “why” is able to be collected in ways that never could have been done in 2002 because we have such amazing access to people. We think it’s just starting, especially now that we can go gather the “why” data through 13 or 14 different methods. It all comes together and you get a full picture. You see what happened and now you get to see “why” and that’s pretty powerful.

    If you’re thinking about the Google Analytics side it would be like these people visit our site. These people abandoned their shopping carts. These people are doing this. Or I’m an LA Hotel and I see a bunch of people from LA visiting. I don’t know why they’re visiting. They’re not staying with me. They used Qualtrics and the first ten people say that they’re there for the happy hour menu. The one person shop running IT just pops up the happy hour menu through Qualtrics without changing their whole website. Now they’re at home and they’re delivering a great experience and it only shows up for the people from LA.

    EmployeeXM – Coolest, Easiest, and Most Sophisticated

    If you look at the airline industry one of the interesting things is we power probably all the feedback on the 30 or 40 different airlines around the world. Most people know Qualtrics for the customer feedback because they’ll fly and they’ll get an email or a text that says thumbs-up thumbs-down, how was your experience? What we’ve seen as we launched the XM (Experience Management) platform, and this is what SAP is so excited about, we created this category because of all the uses we were seeing on Qualtrics. Our employee experience was taking off in a way where we were like, whoa, 50 percent of the customer problems have to do with an employee.

    Then at the same time, the average tenure here in the Bay Area is like 18 months. I don’t know one CEO that says we’re going to go recruit and spend all this money but we’re going to bring people in for only 18 months. So there’s a massive gap. There’s a gap between what they think is happening and really what’s going on. So we said, hey, we’re going to go hard into developing the coolest, easiest, and most sophisticated employee experience product (EmployeeXM). We’re going to build that and we’re going to tie it together with the customer experience.

    The Inside Manifests Itself On the Outside

    From the time they start in the company to the time they exit how do we know everything that’s going? Even in the recruiting process, how do we make sure that as a company what we think we’re delivering is being received on the other side? I believe the inside manifests itself on the outside. We’re seeing this across brands. Now we’re seeing the customer and the employee. If you look in an airline, they’re using us on the customer, the employee, the product, and the brand side.

    If you look at when someone goes and shows up to a gate a lot of times they’re upset before they even get there. The employee deals with an upset customer and that impacts the entire experience. When you rate or you think about how your flight was you’re only thinking about the brand. It’s a bunch of experiences tied together. We’re helping organizations manage all their experiences for the first time on one single platform. It doesn’t make sense that you’ve got five different software’s doing this. We’re doing this at an enterprise level. That’s how people are using it.

    EmployeeXM – The “Coolest” and “Most Sophisticated” Employee Experience Product – Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith
  • Jason Calacanis: This Could Be Facebook’s AOL Peak, Their Yahoo Peak

    Jason Calacanis: This Could Be Facebook’s AOL Peak, Their Yahoo Peak

    Internet entrepreneur and investor Jason Calacanis suggests that Facebook may go the way of AOL and Yahoo. “This could be, it’s possible, maybe not probable but possible, this could be their AOL peak, their Yahoo peak,” said Calacanis. “I think this could be peak Facebook right now.”

    Jason Calacanis, Internet entrepreneur and angel investor in over 150 startups including Uber, Evernote, and Tumblr, discussed the current Facebook crisis on CNBC:

    This is a Pretty Serious Crisis

    This is a pretty serious crisis. If you look at the stakeholders involved, shareholders obviously no longer want to hold the stock and you’re seeing the stock collapse. If you look at employee morale it’s incredibly low. Founders who sold their company to Facebook, to Zuckerberg, and made billions of dollars have been incredibly critical of Mark Zuckerberg, which is pretty incredible when you think about it. You give somebody a couple of billion dollars and then they criticize you on the way out the door, it’s pretty unheard of.

    Advertisers Still Love the Platform

    But advertisers still love the platform. Anecdotally, the companies I work with, private companies, it is the only game in town to reach users at this level of scale. One has to wonder if the fourth constituent, which is governments around the world, are going to put up with their democracies being compromised. You put those four stakeholders together and this is a true crisis for Facebook.

    This could be, it’s possible, maybe not probable but possible, this could be their AOL peak, their Yahoo peak. Those companies peaked with hundreds of millions of users, and in AOL’s case 30 million plus paid users, and it took a decade or two for those companies to deprecate.

    People Are Realizing That This is Not a Positive for Society

    Facebook’s on a whole different scale with two and a half billion people, so I don’t think they’re going anywhere anytime soon. The advertisers still love it and the advertisers are going to always go to the platform that has the lowest customer acquisition cost. But this is a crisis amongst the executives and the people who work there and I think people are starting to realize that net-net this is not a positive for society. Put it all together and you don’t want to own the stock and you don’t want to work at the company, so that’s pretty dark when you think about it.

    This Could Be Peak Facebook Right Now

    I don’t know that there’s an easy solution other than grinding it out for the next three or four years just like they did with the mobile problem. They couldn’t figure out mobile advertising and they figured that out so maybe they’ll figure this out. But I think this could be peak Facebook right now.

  • Inside Has Improvements On The Way

    Inside Has Improvements On The Way

    Last week, Jason Calacanis released a new news aggregation app called Inside. As far as we can tell, the response so far has been generally positive, with some users suggesting they have quickly become “addicted” to it.

    Like with any other app launch, it’s not perfect, and there is plenty of room for improvement. The Inside team has addressed some of the feedback in a new blog post, and promised a few tweaks in a coming update, which it plans to roll out the week of February 17th.

    For one, search is on the menu, including topic search. As it stands right now, the Topics page makes you scroll through a seemingly endless list of topics to find what you want to add. In case you haven’t already figured it out, you can find topics by going to inside.com and add a topic to the url, such as inside.com/tech.

    There will also be some improvements to the algorithm and voting process.

    The team says, “We are redoing the whole algorithm and the voting/thumbing process. For now, /Myfeed will show you just the topics you are following. You can do that two ways: manually follow a topic or be automatically subscribed after thumbing two updates in that topic (and to see what topics you’re following, head over to your /Profile). Just forget about thumbing down for now.”

    But that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to thumb things down soon.

    “As part of our overhaul of the voting/thumb system, you will also no longer need to tap-tap the thumb in order to down vote an update,” the team adds. “There will be two thumbs in our next design: one up and one down.”

    Also in the works are some improvements to the login experience aimed at solving some issues users have been having.

    In case you’re wondering when the Android app will be available, the company says it will be released in the spring. In the meantime, the web version works just fine on Android.

    Image via Inside

  • How This Panda Victim Google-Proofed His Business

    How This Panda Victim Google-Proofed His Business

    Earlier this week, famous web entrepreneur Jason Calacanis unleashed his new app Inside. It’s a news aggregation service, which has proven immediately addictive to fans. While the app itself is an interesting enough story in its own right, there’s another story here that has a moral a lot of online businesses should pay attention to: you need a business that’s Google-proof.

    Does your business rely on Google for traffic? Would you survive if Google de-indexed you? How can you avoid getting killed an algorithm update? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    If you rely primarily on Google, you’re always at the mercy of its algorithm. One unfavorable move and your business could be evaporated, or at the very least, badly damaged. “Diversify your traffic sources” has been a mantra for many since Google unleashed the Panda update in 2011, victimizing many content providers, including Calacanis.

    If you’ll recall, his site Mahalo was among the more well-known victims, and the update led to Calcanis reducing his staff by 10%. Mahalo was never really able to recover from Panda, even after some tweaks to strategy, like relying more on YouTube videos.

    So now he’s taken the team and investors from Mahalo, and created something new. Something Google-proof. It may not sit well with some of the old media crowd (the crowd that still frowns upon Google News), but he’s created something that Google shouldn’t be able to harm.

    Here’s what Inside does: It finds news stories, and employs humans to summarize them in 40 words or 300 characters, and links to the source. It’s really quite simple, but its approach is somewhat refreshing because more than anything else it’s about getting you as much information as possible in as little time as possible. You can consume the gist of countless stories in a relatively short amount of time, and click through to read the stories you really want to know more about from the original source (or at least the source Inside is pointing to). You can browse the “top news,” “all updates,” or your personalized feed, which is constructed of updates based on topics you’ve added (and there are countless topics).

    Inside

    Calacanis has indicated that Inside tries to reduce the friction that wastes people’s time – things like linkbaiting, slideshows and listicles – and just give you the actual need-to-know info from each story. It’s touted mainly as a mobile app, and has launched for iOS and Blackberry. Android is on the way. You don’t really need the app at all though. I’ve been using the web version on Android all week. Just add the bookmark to your homescreen, and you might as well be using the app. It works just fine. It also works just fine from the desktop.

    Inside Desktop

    In an interview with Re/code, Calcanis said it wasn’t worth it to continue to invest in Mahalo because they were “at the mercy of Google’s algorithm or YouTube’s revenue split.”

    “Mahalo made a lot of money, actually, before Google de-indexed us, and really beat us up with their Google search update. But we have plenty of money left, so as an entrepreneur, having great success with Mahalo then a really bad turn of events, we were left with still making millions of dollars, still having a great team, and decided to create a new product.”

    “I don’t hate Google,” he said. “I’m very frustrated with Google. I would be honest. I think they’re good people. I just don’t think they know how to treat partners well.”

    He may not “hate” Google, but it’s clear that there is still some animosity. His comments extended to Twitter.

    Calacanis talked more about Google-proofing his business in an interview with Staci Kramer at Nieman Journalism Lab. He said he doesn’t think building an “SEO-driven” business works anymore, adding that businesses can’t rely on Google not to steal their business “like they did to Yelp and others.” Here’s an excerpt:

    To make a Google-proof company, I wanted to have a killer brand that people would remember and come to like — a product so compelling that it has a repeatable effect. The problem at Mahalo or eHow is you use it for two hours to get your baking recipe, then you don’t use it again for two months — then you use it again for putting up curtains. You really rely on people going to Google.

    With news, people will go directly to a site, which makes it impervious to Google. And the app ecosystem is also impervious to Google. They can’t control apps even though they have a big footprint in Android, nor have they shown a propensity to control the app ecosystem on Android. I think they would get a revolt on their hands if they did. We’re also adding an email component to this.

    So email, social, and apps are three things that Google can’t control. This is very social — people will share. It’s mobile — Google can’t control that. The email function Google moderately can control.

    He later noted that he sees Inside as “kind of analogous to how Google used to run,” in that Google would point you to places on the web and drive traffic, as opposed to “keeping the traffic for themselves”.

    To that point, Google is showing some users a new type of stock search result (which one of his Tweets above references). It removes the links to competitors like Yahoo Finance and MSN Money. We’re still seeing the old version, which does include links, and have reached out to Google to see if this is just a test or if it is rolling out to everyone. Google has not returned our request for comment as of the time of this writing. It’s interesting that Google would make such a move given that it’s currently being scrutinized for allegedly anti-competitive practices in Europe, where it has already offered up concessions including giving competitors more links and visibility.

    Calacanis isn’t the only one to have been hurt by Google to launch a Google-proof product this week. Rap Genius also has a new app out. Unlike Calacanis’ Mahalo, Rap Genius wasn’t a victim of Panda, but got busted engaging in what Google deemed to be a “link scheme” earlier this month. The site was penalized, but was quickly (and controversially) able to climb out of the penalty box.

    Either way, the mobile app gives it a Google-proof alternative to relying on Google traffic, which could stop flowing on any given day. Calacanis also had comments about this:

    Building a Google proof business is easier said than done though. Inside and Rap Genius are examples that make sense as separate apps that shouldn’t need to rely on traffic from Google. Others will continue to try and recover their existing sites from Google penalties and updates, which may be the only logical route in many cases.

    But if there’s a clear way to get around needing Google, you’d be well-advised to pursue that. If there’s not a “clear” way, you may want to put some thought into other possible directions.

    As far as Inside is concerned, there’s no guarantee that it’s going to be a hit, but early reviews have been positive, and it’s pretty easy to see potential monetization strategies via in-stream ads, not unlike those on Facebook or Twitter. Calacanis has already said the model is perfect for this, by the way, though it’s unclear when ads might come.

    It’s very early, but Calacanis may have a winner here. A Google-proof winner.

    What do you think of Calacanis’ strategy for non-Google reliance? How hard is it to get away from dependence on the search giant? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    Lead image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Calacanis Moves On From Google Panda Update With Apparently Google-Proof Product ‘Inside’

    Calacanis Moves On From Google Panda Update With Apparently Google-Proof Product ‘Inside’

    Jason Calacanis is back with a new news app called Inside. It’s out for iOS and Blackberry with an Android version on the way. There’s also a mobile web version.

    Calacanis talks about the project as well as the demise of his previous venture Mahalo in this interview with Re/code:

    Mahalo’s content is still on the web, but it’s sunsetting, and will no longer be invested in. Google, of course, is to be thanked for that. After Google rolled out its Panda update in 2011, Mahalo got hit hard, and the company had to reduce its staff by 10%.

    Calacanis told us at the time, “All we can do is put our heads down and continue to make better and better content. If we do our job I’m certain the algorithm will treat us fairly in the long-term.”

    The strategy turned to ramping up video production efforts.

    Now in the above interview, he says, it wasn’t worth it to continue to invest in because they’re “at the mercy of Google’s algorithm or YouTube’s revenue split.”

    The same investors and team from Mahalo are behind Inside.

    “No need to raise money,” Calacanis says. “Mahalo made a lot of money, actually, before Google de-indexed us, and really beat us up with their Google search update. But we have plenty of money left, so as an entrepreneur, having great success with Mahalo then a really bad turn of events, we were left with still making millions of dollars, still having a great team, and decided to create a new product.”

    “I don’t hate Google. I’m very frustrated with Google,” he says. “I would be honest. I think they’re good people. I just don’t think they know how to treat partners well.”

    What Inside does is summarize news stories in 300 characters or less.

    “It has a mission of creating the world’s best news service,” Calcanis says. “We want to make the best news product in the world.”

    Inside seems like a Google-proof concept. In fact, in kind of takes a page out of Google’s own playbook – summaries of content with links to the original.

    Yes, it’s a news aggregator, but it is an interesting take on the concept.

    “We create a new atomic unit of content,” he explains. “It’s called an update. We have humans writing 1,000 updates a day.”

    These people, he says, find the best original journalism, and then they summarize it in 40 words – 300 characters – which is exactly how much fits on one smartphone screen,” he explains. “The idea is that you can read an update with no linkbaiting, slideshows, listicles, etc. It’s just ‘here’s what happened.’”

    This makes users five or six times more efficient if they just read the updates, he says, as opposed to fighting through linkbaiting headlines and whatnot.

    According to Calacanis, Inside always links to the best journalism.

    OK, so let’s not sugarcoat it. It’s basically people just rewriting the news in short summaries and linking out. But he makes a pretty good point about the linkbaiting, slideshows, etc. There is probably an audience for an app that strips out all the “nonsense” and reduces the friction between seeing a headline and actually seeing the need-to-know information.

    It will be interesting to watch the media industry reaction to this one. My guess is that it won’t be incredibly favorable. On whether or not users will have to bother to click the source links, Calacanis says, “Maybe, maybe not…you’ll drill down into the ones you’re most interested in hearing more.”

    He says in many cases (specifically giving the Quentin Tarantino script leak story as an example) they won’t be able to give you the full story in 300 characters, and this will lead to people clicking the links, even if not in all cases. That means more traffic for the original articles, right? Unfortunately, publishers haven’t always bought into that justification. Ask Google.

    Image via Inside

  • Calacanis Talks Panda Update and Expert Content, Bets on Video

    Calacanis Talks Panda Update and Expert Content, Bets on Video

    After Google rolled out its Panda algorithm update earlier this year, Mahalo, run by Jason Calcanis, got hit hard, and the company had to reduce its staff by 10%. Calacanis told us, “All we can do is put our heads down and continue to make better and better content. If we do our job I’m certain the algorithm will treat us fairly in the long-term. The 90+ members of our team are rallying around this challenge, and you will continue to see amazing content from experts with real credentials at Mahalo.com.”

    Calacanis spoke about Panda again today at a ReadWriteWeb event, saying, “Yeah, Panda has cut our traffic in half. Yet, it didn’t affect our YouTube traffic at all.”

    It is quite interesting to note how Google attitude towards quality content seems to be quite a bit different when it comes to YouTube. This is something HubPages CEO Paul Edmondson has brought up several times, particularly in relation to how Google has treated YouTube content in its search results. YouTube was actually helped by the Panda update.

    Also worth noting, is that Demand Media is the biggest supplier of video to YouTube. As you may know, some of Demand’s properties got hit hard by the update as well. The company recently announced it was getting rid of some of its lower quality eHow content, but implied that we shouldn’t expect much of the company’s video content to be coming down.

    ReadWriteWeb’s Dan Rowinski covered Calcanis’s session, reporting:

    Essentially, Calacanis sees the future of the Web through the lenses of experts who produce video. He does not hold out hope that he can approach Google to tweak Panda so that Mahalo does not suffer along with the rest of the so-called content farms.

    Calacanis is also betting on the resurrection of the email newsletter, this time as an interactive discussion engine of experts. His newest venture is called Launch and is centered around tech news. And as he is known to do, Calacanis is predicting big things for Launch.

    We’re not entirely sure what he means by the resurrection of the email newsletter, as this medium has been thriving for quite some time. Calacanis also said blogging is dead.

    @Jason
    Jason Calacanis    Jason Calacanis: “Blogging Is Dead” & Why “Stupid People Shouldn’t Write” by @Dan_Rowinski http://t.co/X4qW9xm via @RWW 1 hour ago via Tweet Button · powered by @socialditto

  • EzineArticles: Some Content Ranking Higher

    EzineArticles: Some Content Ranking Higher

    Since being hit hard by Google’s recent algorithm update, EzineArticles is hard at work, trying to get its rankings and traffic back up. CEO Chris Knight tells WebProNews, "Beyond what we shared in the blog/twitter, we’re going to return to not sharing specifics on our traffic or ranking."

    He adds, however, "We’ve had quite a few niche categories go up in traffic but the overall is still lower than before last Thursday. I’ve heard today (Wired.com) that Google is working on getting it more ‘right’ so that great content doesn’t get caught in this filter and I’m hopeful that we’ll see better rankings for most of our members who deserve it."

    You can read more about changes the company was looking at here. Since he mentioned Twitter, here’s some recent messages they’ve put out:

    In today’s Blog, we dig deeper into quality and begin by focusing on 3 key areas: http://is.gd/WoRCYlless than a minute ago via HootSuiteEzineArticles Team
    EzineArticles

    NEW: On Link Relevancy and Resource Box Content. Your link and resource box content must be consistent and relevant to your article topic.less than a minute ago via HootSuiteEzineArticles Team
    EzineArticles

    NEW/IMPROVED: Location stuffed articles that fail to deliver a positive user experience will be rejected.less than a minute ago via HootSuiteEzineArticles Team
    EzineArticles

    If English isn’t your first language, we strongly recommend that you have an native-English editor check your work before you submit.less than a minute ago via webEzineArticles Team
    EzineArticles

    Hearing positive comments by many EzineArticles members who are happy they won’t have to compete w/ article vomit/spammy spun content.less than a minute ago via webEzineArticles Team
    EzineArticles

    No layoffs for @EzineArticles team members. Quality exceptional article content will always rise to the top over-time.less than a minute ago via webChris Knight
    ChrisKnight

    We shut down all of our public @EzineAPI services last night. Our positive intentions for its use never materialized. Perhaps another day.less than a minute ago via webChris Knight
    ChrisKnight

    Article spammers typically don’t include their author name at the start of their resource box. Because they are not proud of their articles!less than a minute ago via webEzineArticles Team
    EzineArticles

    If you want credibility, don’t do what article spammers do. Duh. 🙂 Include your author name at the start of your resource box.less than a minute ago via webEzineArticles Team
    EzineArticles

    On Facebook, Knight added:

    Christopher KnightJust announced via Twitter that we won’t be laying off any of our 75 behind-the-scenes team members due to last Thursday’s Google algo update. High quality exception articles will always rise to the top; so shall EzineArticles.com again in the near future. 22 hours ago via Facebook · 16 likes · 9 comments

    He added in the comments of that post, "I’m trying to stay focused on what I’m grateful for. We still served over a million people yesterday. How awesome is that!? Yet, I’m still on high-alert to ensure we do everything we can to draw a very sharp line as to what denotes quality content vs. what should never be published. The bar has been raised, but that’s nothing new."

    The talk about not laying people off is presumably in reference to the Mahalo situation we covered here. Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis told us "All we can do is put our heads down and continue to make better and better content. If we do our job I’m certain the algorithm will treat us fairly in the long-term." 

    "The 90+ members of our team are rallying around this challenge, and you will continue to see amazing content from experts with real credentials at Mahalo.com," he added. 

    Clearly, despite some of the questionable casualties of Google’s update it seems the message was sent loud and clear. You better be putting out quality content if you’re expecting to get traffic from Google. 

    The eHow debate will surely continue to rage on, as that site still gets plenty of Google love, but Demand Media does nothing but stress the importance it is putting on quality as well. 

    In time, we’ll see how Google’s search quality holds up, and how the traffic levels of some of these sites do – and how dependent on Google they remain. 

  • AdSense and Its Relationship to Search Rankings

    AdSense and Its Relationship to Search Rankings

    Many of the lower quality sites Google targeted with its algorithm update rely on Google AdSense ads for revenue. Many low quality sites have been created over the years just to make AdSense money. Obviously Google knows this, but when some of the big sites often labeled as content farms churn out mass content, there is potentially a lot of money to be made for both that content site and for Google. So a question like, "Does your advertising spending with Google influence your position in Google’s natural search?" isn’t exactly unheard of.

    In a recent Google Blog post, Matt Cutts wrote: 

    One misconception that we’ve seen in the last few weeks is the idea that Google doesn’t take as strong action on spammy content in our index if those sites are serving Google ads. To be crystal clear:

    – Google absolutely takes action on sites that violate our quality guidelines regardless of whether they have ads powered by Google;

    – Displaying Google ads does not help a site’s rankings in Google; and

    – Buying Google ads does not increase a site’s rankings in Google’s search results.

    That’s Google’s "crystal clear" position on the matter. Whether you want to believe it or not is up to you. This will likely be questioned for years to come – never proven or disproved. With eHow still ranking so well in Google, the disbelief of some will no doubt continue. 

    Jason Calacanis on Content Farms and Huffington PostJason Calacanis, who has been in the headlines today due to layoffs at Mahalo, shared some thoughts on Quora about Google search quality and its relationship to AdSense. On whether or not ad spend with Google influences natural search position, Calacanis,  whose site Mahalo was hit hard by the Google algorithm update (hence those layoffs), says, "No way."

    He wrote:  "These two sides of the business have a 100 foot chinese wall between them. I know, because over three companies and tens of millions of dollars in google adsense revenue I can tell you that when we had an issue with Google search even *ASKING* the revenue side resulted in a response like ‘you don’t want us to ask Google search quality for help because they will not listen to us or even let us in the building. Church and state in my experience."

    "Now, I do think that Google *might* be alerted to the existence of a site via things like google chrome, google analytics and google adsense," he added. "This means that the google spider might crawl your site quicker because of these services, but it doesn’t impact your rank in any way."

    He goes on to say that he thinks people get "conspiracy theorist" about it. Like many conspiracy theories, it may not ever go away. 

    Google did devalue a lot of sites that use AdSense. 

    Another Goolger (in the same Quora thread) poitned to this page as the most basic explanation of what affects a site’s ranking.

  • Calacanis on Google Algorithm Aftermath and Impact on Mahalo

    Calacanis on Google Algorithm Aftermath and Impact on Mahalo

    As previously reported, Mahalo is reducing its staff by 10% as a result of the loss of revenue and traffic from Google’s most recent algorithm update. We reached out to Calacanis for comment on the situation. 

    He told us, "All we can do is put our heads down and continue to make better and better content. If we do our job I’m certain the algorithm will treat us fairly in the long-term."

    "The 90+ members of our team are rallying around this challenge, and you will continue to see amazing content from experts with real credentials at Mahalo.com," he added.

    Hey @charliesheen, I’m having a rough week… any chance I can swing by for breakfast at your place?less than a minute ago via webJason Calacanis
    Jason

    Mahalo is re-evaluating its freelance content production strategy, and is even pausing it for the time being. The company’s video unit is still going strong, however, which Mahalo says is encouraging it to ramp up video production. 

    Google has been talking about refining the update, to let some of the higher quality content that got hit work its way back up in the rankings. We’ll see if Mahalo recovers. 

  • Why Not Everyone is a Fan of the New Facebook Groups

    Why Not Everyone is a Fan of the New Facebook Groups

    Some people really like Facebook’s new Groups feature. Influential tech blogger Robert Scoble could hardly praise the feature enough. He used the phrase "massively cool" more than once in his description. He’s not alone. Many are welcoming the opportunity to separate their friends into different groups and communicate in different ways with them (like chat, email lists, and integration with third-party apps). 

    Some are less than thrilled with the new feature, however.The feature was announced during an event based around the concept of giving users more control, but it appears that more control doesn’t necessarily mean complete control. Jason Calacanis, for example, found out the hard way that anyone can be added to a group, regardless of whether or not they actually opted in (hat tip to Matthew Ingram). The group creator has the ability to make the group open, closed, or secret.

    Calacanis found out he was added to a Facebook group for NAMBLA (the North American Man-Boy Love Association), along with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington. At Calacanis.com, Jason posted an email he sent to Facebook informing them of what happened. He closed with, "If you guys want to run these new features by me before you launch them, I can probably save you from a couple of privacy law suits each year."

    This is really the kind of thing you would think Facebook would want to avoid after all of the privacy brouhaha earlier this year. Of course not everyone is going to have people adding them to questionable groups, but if it can be done, some people just aren’t going to be comfortable with it. 

    It’s not much different from tagging in Facebook Photos, a feature that I’ve frankly had issues with myself. It’s nice that anyone can tag you in a photo and have that show up first thing in the photos on your profile isn’t it? Groups adds that extra layer of association though, which some my find even more objectionable, as with Calacanis’ case. With this kind of functionality, people could be made to look like they’re Nazis, KKK members, pedophiles, Justin Bieber fans, or anything else.  Granted, users can report groups to Facebok:

    Facebook - Report Group

    I can definitely see the feature being abused for politics. It’s probably already happening. 

    The feature does appear to only let you add people who you are friends with to Groups, so you may want to choose your friends carefully. It may not be a good idea to be friends with just anybody, and if you are, at least keep up with your notifications. You will be notified when you’ve been added to a group. 

    The email feature has received some criticism as well. If you are added to a group and you don’t keep up with your notifications, you may find your inbox getting filled up by people in that group posting things. You can put an end to this by opting out, but some feel you should have to opt in to this feature to begin with. 

    What do you think of the new Facebook Groups? Let us know.