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."
who wants to work 24 hours a day for $10,000 a year.
Well, what will bring back the dot.com repo man?
first post, long live dialtone
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Just look at the picture of the guy. It says all you need to know. Pretentious, overinflated self-worth, and a (masked) double-chin to boot.
hello dear sirs my name is jamesh i are india (bihar) can u guide me install red had linux 9?
Social network blogs are killing internet content. Who wants to read through a tone of IRC logs to find one line of matching relevance?
Blogs can be ok, for instance of the blogger is really blogging something that he/she does on a daily basis because it's in a single field of expertise.
Blogs should not be used for trivial diaries, and that I fear is what the AOL users will use them for.
On the other hand, there are some blog entries which are worthy of becomming wiki sites.
Why UNIX?
multiple writers, one location and one general direction?
amazing.
Cue a bunch of people saying how blogs are stupid and no one wants to read about boring details of other people's lives, jobs, hobbies, whatever.
Cue response which points out you shouldn't judge blogs by just browsing them at random like it was 1994 and you're surfing the internet by clicking on links on crappy geocities sites, you should look at ones that are popular and fit your tastes, and use google and blogsearch etc. to find them. Everything is crap if you don't have an easy way of discriminating from the good and the bad, etc.
I resemble that remark!
That's enough stories about slimy trash bloggers for one week. Now post something interesting!
Just read this story from the print version (that I pay for, unlike this free link...thanks Wired.com!) in the can and came back to the computer. Refreshed Slashdot and there it is! It's a pretty good article, the beginning is kind of weak but the bulk of it gives you a good perspective on how blog companies make their money and get bloggers.
Say what you will but his company is responsible for Engadget and that sites not half bad...well, they get linked to from Slashdot quite a bit and I guess that means something...actually no, no it does not.
Lots of people had online diaries long before the horrible term "weblog" came about. Just because people now try to call those diaries "blogs" doesn't mean those diary keepers now have an obligation to provide content you want.
If you haven't had enough of dot com bubbles, go buy some GOOG or AAPL and ride it up for 100% before you lose your shirt
The really amazing part is that he talked about her without a particular point or even a real compliment to whatever she does--just a generic awe of her 'importance,' with a strong undertone of "...And she was flirting with me !"
All I could think of was, "What a repugnant personality." When I saw the Wired picture, it was exactly as I imagined him.
Whenever I hear a dot-com bullshit story like this, I think of Whoopi Goldberg and Flooz. Remember Flooz? I do. Their headquarters was down on El Camino Real, down near that mexican place near Stanford, upstairs from the Scientology headquarters.
Pay for your cooz with some flooz.
The article makes the guy sound like a total nightmare. At least, though, he doesn't walk around with a pug under his arm.
I guess the story illustrates what happens: because the internet is so open, it is also open to unlimited quantities of marketers, hype and money. These burn up new ideas at a rate like nothing else. Whatever a new idea might have been, it comes to be seen as just another vehicle for your actual entrepreneur, init, and you can no longer believe a word anyone says. There is always an agenda, and in this case it's your money in their pocket. It's only a matter of time before the whole scene has been gutted to the point of collapse and then the crowd moves on to the next big-bucks bandwagon. So I guess that blogs are, if not dead, then walking wounded because they have no credibility left. I wonder what will come next.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
There is another business venture consisting of associated blogs - Pajamas Media - which should be mentioned in this context. Its business model is based on creating a multi-blog advertising system. As far as I know, pajamas uses serious political blogs rather than "daily diary" sorts of things.
Perhaps we need a different term for serious blogs about whatever subject. Also a term for the commenter community that grows up around each one. Here's your chance to get famous, although Bill Quick, who invented the term "blogosphere," doesn't seem to have gathered enough fame from that.
The only good weather is bad weather.
I thought they were referring to DotComGuy who changed his name to well...DotComGuy. And then back again.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
Well, if history is going to repeat itself (which I'm pretty sure will), Weblogs, Inc. will die.
Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Bugs are good for building character in the user.
So his system seems to be just a labour-intensive process for manufacturing what are basically just glorified splogs? I think a fully automated system is more lucrative, and more scalable.
Da Blog
Has AOL ever come up with anything revolutionary (AIM?) or are they just following the lead of Microsoft, IBM (Lotus), and Symantec (Norton, Ghost, Sygate)?
Blogs are just personal homepages without any need for the writer to know HTML, just as podcasts are just audio files. Newspeak sucks.
Turning blogs into business? Sounds like another site I know. . . (Hint: it starts with "S" and ends with "lashdot")
www.linuxpenguin.net
But is it enough for one human person who works only 8 hours a day?
Christ, 61 posts already, and not one joke about the last name 'Calacanis'?
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)
Did Rob Malda ever really go "away"?
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
...are always either bloggers or people who sell blogging services.
Bloggers are almost always 20-somethings who still haven't realised that those of us with no time and inclination to blog also have no interest in their whining neediness and desperate bid for attention.
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.
Those interested in blog networks should check out: http://www.blognetworklist.com/ . There is a lot of interesting information about blog networks there (rankings, traffic, size, etc.)
Simpy
Most corporate websites are gay too but just try going and getting a driver without flash!? installed or clicking thru all this garbage to get there. These days it takes 5 seconds to download the driver you're looking for once you find it. .... nobody cares about your new intel inside logo, etc.
Nobody cares about your cat's trip to the vet
I for one welcome our new--oh, wait, never mind.
On a serious note though, am I the only one sick of these "poster boys" who do nothing but produce hot air?
Adventure, Romance, MAD SCIENCE!
If your definition includes deranged lectures from the very neo-cons who brought us Iraq and can't wait to bog down US National Guardsmen in the next hellhole of their making, then, sure, Pajamas Media is a "serious political blog."