Slashdot Mirror
Blogs Bring Back Dot-Com Poster Boy
An anonymous reader writes "Wired has a profile of Jason Calacanis, the former Dot-Com bubble rider, and now the mind behind the sale of Weblogs, Inc. to AOL." From the article: "Calacanis and Alvey wanted to get in on the action, but the scale and limitations of blogs bugged them. 'We decided that one blog, like Rafat's, could make tens of thousands of dollars a year,' says Alvey. 'Definitely enough for one person who works 24 hours a day to sustain a business. But how could you get so that you could add more people?' The answer, they decided, was to build a network of blogs."
Having worked for them (and no, I am not lying, I did), I can attest to that. (Well, the first two bits.) They also have some of the worst contracts on Earth for their slaves... Sorry, employees. Just a little shy of having to sign away your soul and your first born.
The feeling I had the whole time I was with them is if you join their little cult (and believe me, that's the atmosphere on the private mailing list etc... Used to make me feel physically sick reading it sometimes) you'll get on famously. If you ain't prepared to drink the Kool Aid, though, your tenure will be very short.
A handful of folk at the top are getting rich off those being paid peanuts down below. The sad thing is those people are saying "Yes, please, give me more." There are people there who actually think posting on one of their sites will lead them to a top career in writing, when in reality they'd most likely get laughed out of the office of anyone they showcased that too.
Suffice to say, if you're ever on Digg and see a link from one of their sites, chances are it's a self link, that will be coupled with a begging post to the company mailing list saying "Please Digg my story". Content should float on it's own accord, not be helped to the top by a bunch of brainwashed sychophants. (And that was one of the many reason I was sick of working for them.)
My old boss gave me an invite to a party he threw back in the go-go days of the late 1990s. He was worse in person.
I would occassionally look at his magazine when waiting for a meeting with someone (but I would never pay for it). I did subscribe to his daily e-mail alerts, but seldom read them. The whole thing was purely a product of the bubble, and he was most definitely a creature of the bubble.
In an era when people were making huge investments based on fads rather than business plans, Jason Calacanis positioned himself as the arbiter of all dot-com related fads. He threw parties that were a bunch of people congratulating each other for how thoroughly their soon-to-be-bankrupt companies would change the world. The parties would also serve as prime places for people working for companies that were about to run out of money to connect with people who just got venture capital funding. At the one of these parties that I went to, someone actually tried to hire me with the pickup line of "my partner and I have started 20 companies between us." When I asked, he sheepishly admitted that the one they'd started that week was the only one that wasn't bankrupt.
I can't blame Calacanis. After all, if he hadn't taken up the role, someone else would have. I can't say that I miss the days of having to wonder how long my next employer will stay in business...
-JMP
Funny because I was just thinking about this same subject. One of the major arguments I hear on Slashdot is that blogs with no original content provide nothing new and are useless. I admit I have such a blog (two really), rarely updated and not much on commentary or original thought lately. I always tell myself I'm going to change it or fix the layout but I never get the chance, but that isn't the point.
The point is that there are all types of people putting their tiny bits of information out there and hopefully linking to one thing they are interested in. One nice side effect of millions of blogs (Technorati lists 24.2 million) is that there are measurable changes to the "structure" of the Web. Google can now look and see what is the most popular razor or news story because idiots like me might link to it. When I blogged a lot I like to use services like Technorati, but I now like it for it's ability to find news stories that for some reason are popular; hopefully because they are important or entertaining. You sometimes find stories that are popular because people liked them, or because a lot of people thought they were worth reading. Meanwhile your usual news outlets forgot to tell you or the story was too obscure.
Sure, there are other options, tools and better ways to do this. del.icio.us does the same thing, and maybe even better. The point is that it is being done. My response is that people are active on the Web. It's a good thing to see. Cue the people who agree! I thank the 24 million blogs for bringing personality to the information age. Hopefully after years of blogging and participation in social network programs researchers can use this information for more useful purposes. It's already starting to happen, we are already starting to see the outcome.
It's great because these are thoughts, emotions, desires, interests, and even unusual proclivities being brought online for the world's disposal. The people I want to blog more are the one who fire off a few short, impulse entries than the ones who are looking to show the world their writing talent.
One thing I haven't mentioned is spam, and we all know that is bad wherever and however it finds its way to our screens.
Get your Unix fortune now!
The ability to format the data as a diary, or a collection of diaries, is not in and of itself anything I would consider noteworthy. The content may be, and sometimes is, but the use of extra layers of language to describe something that doesn't need describing just obscures what is interesting by emphasizing the points that are not.
(eg: There are plenty of commercial sites on the Internet today, but the use of "e-commerce" as a specific term is on the decline and "dot-com" is generally a term of ridicule. Sometimes, language gets in the way of the expression.)
As I see it, blogs that are essentially just personal rants will die a richly-deserved death, but "insider" blogs - which the media can draw from without being in danger of lawsuits, grand juries, etc - will likely prosper. "Special Interest Groups" (SIGs) do well as blogs - Slashdot is an example - but I doubt you can manufacture a SIG from a blog alone.
We will know when blogs have become totally accepted. That will occur when we no longer need to see them as anything special, they'll just be a part of the whole.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I saw this guy give the commencement address nephew's high-school graduation. Basically, the theme of his speech was "I've always been at the right place at the right time" and "everything always works out for Jason Calacanis." Absent were any inspirational anecdotes about working hard or otherwise having any personal character. It was more "as long as you get an internship at Sony" (or whatever) "you're golden!"
Whatever happened to the "golden boy" that hits rock-bottom (his words in the speech, btw) and then decides to dedicate himeself to philantropy. Instead, this guy wants to "monetize" (remember that word?)...blogs?
Yes.