Jason Calacanis Leaving AOL

It’s official, [tag]Jason Calacanis[/tag] is leaving AOL, and after reading his post about Jim Miller, I would say it is largely because of his departure as well, although it could just be an easy time to say adios. This appears to be big news in the blogosphere, posts are all over the place about it, Jason, in case you didn’t already know built Weblogs, Inc, into a multi million dollar operation that includes Engadget and many other high traffic blogs, that was bought for about 25 million by AOL. Jason had no agreement that meant he had to stay, so the year he put in at AOL was of his own free will, and leaving now will not cost him a cent, other than his normal salary, I guess.

It is being covered by the NYTimes,

Jason Calacanis, the outspoken blogger and entrepreneur who ran AOL’s Netscape division, resigned on Thursday in the wake of the firing of AOL’s chief executive, Jonathan Miller.

Mr. Calacanis sold his company, Weblogs Inc., a network of blogs, to AOL last year and continued to run it from offices in Santa Monica, Calif. This year he took over Netscape.com, transforming it from a Web portal into a site that lets users vote and comment on news articles. Source: NYTimes

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It is being covered by Techcrunch, who first broke the story,

We just heard from a source that Jason Calacanis has resigned from AOL. Jason joined AOL just over a year ago when his startup, Weblogs, Inc., was acquired. Most recently, he took over management of Netscape, which relaunched earlier this year as a Digg-like news portal.

I just spoke to Jason briefly on IM - his response as of now is “no comment”. He also spoke to me off the record but that’s, well, off the record. Source: TechCrunch

Jason confirmed it on his blog,

TechCrunch broke the story (less than two hours after I told everyone here), and the New York Times confirmed it with me by phone this afternoon.

I’ve got a lot to say, but I’m thinking that I’ll just talk about it on the final episode of the Gillmor Gang podcast–which we happen to be doing tomorrow (crazy coincidence I know). Source: Jason Calacanis

Valleywag has had several posts about Jason quitting,

Jason Calacanis, the energetic and annoying publishing entrepreneur who once thought he could rise to the top at AOL, is leaving the internet media company. He’s not commenting on the record, but his blog describes Jonathan Miller, ousted CEO of AOL, as his mentor, and Miller’s departure as a sad day. He’s out.

Calacanis first came to notoriety as an internet promoter in the late 1990s as the founder of Silicon Alley Reporter, a print magazine which fulfilled in New York the same role as Silicon Valley’s Red Herring. At the height of the boom, Calacanis brushed off a rumored $30m offer for the title by Time Inc., though accounts of that approach vary. Source: Valleywag

Beet.tv had an article on it, but they covered a different angle,

If AOL is smarting from Jason’s departure, they still have their superstar blogger Peter Rojas, Editor in Chief of Engadget, which is ranked the world’s number one or two blog by Technorati. I saw Peter tonight at the TechCrunch party in New York City. He confirmed he’s staying with AOL.

Peter was a big part of the acquisition of the Calacanis blog network, which I understand netted some $25 million from AOL. Source: Beet.tv

They will certainly miss Jason, he is one of those go getters who doesn’t understand the word fail, much like Thomas Edison, he just finds ways that it hasn’t worked yet, until he hits the right solution. But, since AOL retained Peter Rojas, regarded by some as the number one blogger because of Engadget, they will not loose anything there, although, I am sure he will take some of the Weblogs bloggers with him, you know he will. Wonder what will happen to Netscape now and who will take over for him and what will it mean to all of the Netscape Navigators, the ones they are paying to promote the community?

Posted by Jimmy Daniels Posted in: AOL, Blogging, Netscape, Paid Blogging 2 Comments » November 2006

More Uproar Over Paid Blogging

I know at least two full time bloggers who are really upset with PayPerPost and the new model they are promoting, getting paid for specific blog posts about products in their inventory. One is Jim Kukral from Revenews.com, an online revenue and online publishing blog I post at, he has posted on the subject several times, one tonight apparently Saying they are going to fail, another here comparing it to Cremaid, what a sucky name, an interview with the founder of PayPerPost here, you get the idea.

The second is Michael Arrington from TechCrunch, whose latest post is PayPerPost Is Now Officially Absurd, really takes there latest attempt to task,

At PayPerPost, bloggers are offered cash to write about products. Disclosure is optional, and often the bloggers are required to only express positive comments.

Don’t look for PayPerPost to require blogger disclosure anytime soon. Instead, they are creating a distraction, designed to keep the buzz about PayPerPost going strong, as well as to move people’s attention away from the core issue of blogger disclosure of product shilling.

In a move reminiscent of big tobacco funding tobacco research, PayPerPost is announcing a new initiative on Monday called DisclosurePolicy, which “provides policy creation tools, best practices and forums for discussing the delicate balance between content creator freedoms and audience transparency expectations.”

Now, the Disclosure Policy site opened a campaign on PayPerPost, so they actually are paying bloggers 10 bucks to post a disclosure policy. And that just doesn’t feel right. Would’ve been more convincing to me had they just required one and not paid for it. I agree that some aspects of their business model are suspect, allowing some advertisers to require positive posts is their first big mistake, and probably why they don’t require full disclosure on each post, who would believe any of the posts if they new they had to be positive? And, that is, of course, their second big mistake, not making them disclose that it is an advertisement on each post. But, bloggers are risking their own reputations, so I guess they know what’s best for them.

Blurring the lines in this way - facilitating the pollution of the blogosphere while creating an illusion of doing something good for the public, is a good business move for PayPerPost. But it is a terrible development for the blogosphere and public trust. I hope that very few bloggers are suckered into going along with this.

In their defense, they look at each post before hand, so they have final approval, and it would be silly to risk letting anyone put out any spammy posts, or other crap, so, I don’t think there will be a pollution of the blogosphere. Ultimately, it will be up to [tag]PayPerPost.com[/tag] what people think of them, if they only allow high quality posts, they may be able to do something. I can see some potential in using a campaign to cause a stir, or to promote something that is not bought and sold, drive traffic to new websites, but reviews may not be the best use of this advertising program. Or, as Wayne said in the comments at Revenews.com, “I remain open minded. I think I’ll start a “Pay For Flame”. Successfully get a red flaming blog battle going and you get double payouts, etc. PPE, Pay-Per-Escalation”. Surely there are some webmasters who see good links with strong keyword terms, cheap.

Read the TechCrunch post, one of the venture capitalists who invested in [tag]PayPerPost[/tag] posted there along with over 160 other comments. Some serious discussion is good for the soul.

Posted by Jimmy Daniels Posted in: Blogging, Paid Blogging 1 Comment » October 2006

It’s Official Jason Calacanis Was Right

Okay, I’ve officially changed my mind, [tag]Jason Calacanis[/tag] was right. Originally, I didn’t think the offer, as it has become known, was a good idea. In a nutshell, he offered to pay $1,000 a month for “social bookmarking” rights. Put in at least 150 stories a month and they’ll pay you $12,000 a year. I thought it would cause a lot of people to start submitting stories to get noticed and figured it would gum up the system with people posting the same urls over and over. I don’t see that happening, so these sites duplicate story detection and voting mechanisms are doing their jobs so far.

I have been watching Netscape and the participation is increasing, the number of stories is increasing, the number of Netscape users submitting stories is probably increasing, members like Tim Loftis really stepped up to the plate and convinced Jason to hire Netscape users earlier than he figured he would.

Voting, comments, and a number of other factors have doubled (or tripled) over the past two weeks at Netscape since we hired our first 10 Navigators. These folks are doing an AMAZING job of not only putting in good stories, but they are building the community by *teaching* and *showing* folks how to be good citizens on a social bookmarking site. That is really what this is about, training folks on how to be members of the community and truth be told I’ve learned a lot from the Navigators and Benkler on that subject–it is the key.

I like the direction Netscape is going in and have decided to contribute more there myself, Digg is the big site, but you have to deal with trolls on every post. I realize not everyone agrees with everything, but come on, I’ve always believed that if you don’t have anything good and constructive to say, then you shouldn’t say it. So, Jason has won me over as well.

Posted by Jimmy Daniels Posted in: Netscape, Paid Blogging, Social Networks 1 Comment » September 2006

Top 100 Digg Profile for Sale on eBay

Here’s another for the I told you department, a top 100 profile from Digg is now up for bid on eBay. The profile for sale is the Digg username GeekForLife. The user has submitted 748 Digg stories, 39 of which have made it to the Digg home page. The current bid is for $325.

Wonder how Jason will feel when the user that wins asks if he can get paid? Or, will the person buying it take advantage of the status that account has in getting stories dugg? Or, will Kevin Rose do the right thing and reset all it’s stats? I vote for number 3, but, as everything on the internet, we shall see.

A side story, someone on Digg guessed the password, apparently they had set the password as digg, duh huh. It looks like they are returning going by what was said in the comments.

This will happen more, but I would say most should take place behind doors, so the accounts keep their value.

Found this through TechCrunch. Some in the comments say that user is building up the bids himself with accounts created this month. If you can’t trust someone who is selling a digg user account, who can you trust?

Posted by Jimmy Daniels Posted in: Digg, Paid Blogging, Social Networks, eBay 1 Comment » July 2006

Everyone’s Gotta Eat

This is the latest idea from [tag]Jason Calacanis[/tag], paying the top users at Digg, Delicious, Reddit, Flickr, Myspace, and Newsvine $1000 a month to submit 150 or more stories a month as Netscape Navigators, doing the same thing they are doing now. He says if they don’t share the wealth with the top users they will be lost to startups that will identify them and buy their time.

We’re gonna identify these people in our system as “Netscape Navigators,” and they will work with our full-time “Netscape Anchors” to build a community. I see a day when we have the eight full-time Anchors working with two dozen Navigators to keep the site fresh and clean (hmm… I think I need a better choice of words here).

Now, I’m all for people making money at what they like to do, lord knows I’ve spent enough time in my recliner doing what I like, but wouldn’t this corrupt the whole process? Wouldn’t this just cause more users to post more stories in the hopes of getting picked up and paid to do it somewhere else, clogging up those sites more and more with users trying to have the one story that gets pushed to the top, each submitting duplicate stories, changing titles and descriptions, etc, etc. And if each site ends up paying these users, I can see the same users trying to “work” at each site to increase their income.

I guess we will see in time, because people will take them up on their offer, whether it is good or bad for these types of sites remains to be seen.

Posted by Jimmy Daniels Posted in: Blogging, Netscape, Paid Blogging 3 Comments » July 2006

The Uproar Over Paid Blogging

It appears that TechCrunch isn’t too happy with the business model at PayPerPost.com, a new way to advertise on blogs and such, Scoble talks about it and I even found a post from News.com that said, How to kill blogs: PayPerPost.com. From their site,

For Publishers:

PayPerPost is an automated system that allows you to promote your Web site, product, service or company through the PayPerPost network of bloggers. Advertise on blogs to create buzz, build traffic, gain link backs for search engine ranking, syndicate content and much more. You provide the topic, our network of bloggers create the stories and post them on their individual blogs.

For Bloggers:

Get Paid to Blog. You’ve been writing about Web sites, products, services and companies you love for years and you have yet to benefit from all the sales and traffic you have helped generate. That’s about to change. With PayPerPost advertisers are willing to pay you to post on topics. Search through a list of topics, make a Blog posting, get your content approved, and get paid. It’s that simple.

I don’t understand what all of the uproar is about, it’s been around websites and done for years already, it’s called affiliate marketing and webmasters have been posting links and reviews on websites for years in hopes of making money, so why not on blogs? There are many ways to make money on the internet and this is just another way to do it, TechCrunch has multiple banners, Scoble has Amazon links to his book, and all benefit and are compensated in more ways than money, as my friend Wayne Porter says, it’s not just about money, it’s about relationships and knowledge.

From TechCrunch,

Is this a bad joke designed to torpedo the blogosphere’s credibility in general? It doesn’t appear to be. If we’re all trying to negotiate a space between Hollywood and mainstream journalism, this is taking things way too far towards the most insipid parts of Hollywood.

Please, give me a break, talk about over hyping something. From their advertising page,

If you have a new product to showcase, TechCrunch is the place to do it.

So, which is it? Why shouldn’t TechCrunch get paid for some posts? I bet they could command a much higher rate than most bloggers and would deserve it because of the buzz and traffic they could and do provide. And I’m sure one of their sponsors won’t like this comment by Marshall, comment number 90,

Abe, I wrote the original post and I don’t like the service from our sponsor that you link to here either. I do think it’s different, however, as that service does not specifically target blogs. Advertisers are Mike’s department, though.

On it being up to individual bloggers, I think it would be much better PR for this company to require disclosure. Not doing so is bad.

I wonder if TechCrunch would like it if I pointed him to that comment.

I have no problem with the PayPerPost site, not sure if I would use it or not because I have not signed up to check it out first hand yet, and I have posted reviews before of products before because I received one from a company, like the Oakley Thump2 review I posted on Tipsdr. I received a pair to try out because of a post I made on RealTechNews, when I mentioned I would have to try them before I bought them because I have an un-usually large cranium, hehe. I posted the review because I received the glasses, but it did not influence my feelings for the product, and how much I liked and continue to like them, I have ample opportunity to use them when I mow our little league ball fields.

I will always say how and where I get something for review, whether I buy it myself or someone sends something to me, it’s all part of the story, so why not mention it?

Scoble was even calling to out such blogs, saying “How about we start a blog where we can “out” bloggers who accept free stuff without disclosing that?” Ya, that sounds like a good idea, lets start a witch hunt while we are at it, wait, they already are.

Jason Calcanis jumps in with this post, PayPerPost: Stupid and evil.

The currency of blogging is authenticity and trust… you pay folks to blog about a product and you compromise that. I would almost care about this, but it’s so obvious to everyone that this is either a joke or an idiot that there is nothing more to say.

From the Weblogs, Inc site which he started,

Looking to get paid to blog about subjects you love? Tell us what you’re passionate about and let’s find out if there’s a fit!

So, it’s okay if he pays them, but not anyone else? I don’t get it.

Posted by Jimmy Daniels Posted in: Blogging, Paid Blogging 1 Comment » July 2006