Jason Calacanis is a master storyteller. Like most writers, he needs an editor. Here's a summary remix of Calacanis's secret insider mail, sent a few hours after Mahalo's layoffs were expertly leaked to everyone but me, thanks pal.
Jason Calacanis took time out from his mailing list to blog about firing a baker's dozen of his Mahalo staff. The very same brilliant, hard-working, antifamily people he said he'd never compromise on. Today's featured commenter is sggrf, who wonders out loud on whether Calacanis might turn the episode into conference…
Mahalo founder: "Tough times, hard decisions." Zillow founder: "Difficult times, difficult decisions." Seesmic founder: "Tough times. Tough decisions." The only thing easy in these times is what to headline your post about the employees you just laid off. Also, make sure to note that you are sad.
Bulldog aficionado Jason Calacanis recently predicted that a large number of Web 2.0 startups will end up on "life support." Could Mahalo, his so-called "human-powered search engine," be one of them? He has laid off 13 of the humans who power Mahalo, with plans to rehire some of them offshore in the Philippines. It's…
"We're liveblogging the world," funtrepreneur Jason Calacanis tweeted about Mahalo's new human-powered news feed on the search site's front door. Jason, help me out here: A couple weeks ago you bragged about forecasting the Startup Depression of 2008. Now you've added a powered-by-humans news feed to your product that…
It's Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis's world, we just have the misfortune of living in it. The former Silicon Alley Reporter publisher decided to quit blogging, instead opting to send out his verbose fonts of wisdom as emails. Take his latest 2,948-word missive, "(The) Startup Depression" — claiming that anywhere from…
Excerpted from an email Jason Calacanis sent to fans, and later published on his ostensibly shuttered blog:
Reprinted from an email, because Jason Calacanis makes it impossible to otherwise link to.
We know that Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis likes to feed his pinup bulldogs Taurus and Fondue burgers from In-n-Out and Pinkberry froyo (to keep their coats glossy and brains brand-aware, we're assuming). Little did we know that he's also eating his own dog food. In a monstrous essay sent via telegraph email titled …
I hope VCs are realistic about any search startup's chances against Google at this stage. Cuil's traffic withered shortly after launch. Another gang of Google graduates at The Mechanical Zoo have revealed scant details of their plans with the announcement of Aardvark. The short version: Rather than asking a search…
Our featured commenter, Robin Wauters, has one question for you about the latest spat between Mahalo's Jason Calacanis and Rocketboom's Aaron Baron:
In this corner, Andrew Baron, cofounder of hot videoblog mess Rocketboom, challenging Mahalo founder and incumbent blowhard champeen Jason Calacanis. Baron lands the first blow, citing Mahalo's "flat" traffic. Calacanis counters with some trash talk and then a body blow to Baron's privileged upbringing. Baron…
Flaxen-locked funtrepreneur Jason Calacanis says Google has been a content company for a while now. With Knol, the Googlers plan to become the Internet's reference library rather than just its card catalog. I used the editorial equivalent of gzip to compress Calacanis's arguments down to 1/10 size.
The road to recovery from gambling addiction is a long one, but the first priority is admitting to yourself that you have a problem, which Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis did in his first email missive since quitting the blogosphere:
At the brand new Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco last night, the team at European VC firm Wellington Partners celebrated the addition of an outpost in Palo Alto to their existing offices in London and Munich with a swell mixer. The hors d'oeuvres? Cheese gougères, tiny lamb chops, mushroom napoleons,…
No, we did not head down to sleepy Palo Alto for the Search SIG meeting featuring small-time players like Mahalo, Wikia and Microsoft, but Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis seems to wish we did. But why bother going when we can get juicy quotes about Jimmy Wales, who founded for-profit Wikia after failing to figure out…
We hold these Truths to be self-evident: Wikipedia's Tyranny of the Mob sucks. Every time I run an item about Jimmy Wales, my page gets hacked. So what about Jason Calacanis's pursuit of happiness over at Mahalo? Former Uncov blogger and army of one Ted Dziuba has posted a step-by-step pictorial guide to practicing…
If, like me, you've been tricked by super-cute bulldogs into trying Jason Calacanis's Mahalo search engine, you've probably been disappointed by some of Mahalo's results pages. Calacanis has a new message for frustrated users: Fix it yourself. Mahalo now allows anonymous users — tracked by their IP addresses, same…
Before creating the world's most comprehensive list of videogame cheats, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis worked at AOL under then-CEO Jon Miller. Calacanis joined AOL only after it bought Weblogs Inc. from him for $25 million and since Miller led that acquisition, eventually invested in Mahalo and now sits on the…
Meghan Asha has been tied to notoriously workaholic TechCrunch publisher Michael Arrington over the last few months. But could she be tiring of a beau with no work-life balance?
