The Jason Calacanis Weblog

NYT says new AOL chief has long view... I hope so. (and some free advice for what it's worth)

Jason Calacanis — 2006-12-19T11:36:00+00:00

Filed under: AOL, Blogsmith, Business, Netscape, Weblogs, Inc.

I don't know Randy Falco or Ron Grant, but I wish them luck. The NYT says they have a long view of AOL, everything I read says AOL's is going to be cleaned up and sold.

My advice to both men: start blogging today. AOL was a very closed culture when we got there a year ago, and blogging is what really pulled the company into the Web world. There are dozens of important folks in the company having honest discussions on blogs and the best way for you two to build AOL is to embrace the culture of honesty, transparency, and debate. Blogging is the best medium for this. Take a page from Microsoft and let all your team members blog, and even pay some folks to be company bloggers. Let it all hang out, let the marketplace tell you where to go, and be open about everything--the good and the bad.

Even though I was at AOL for only a year it felt like home. ~50 members of "my team" are still rocking it out at Netscape, WeblogsInc, and Blogsmith, and I really hope the new guys recognize the amazing potential those groups have and continue to invest in them.

Weblogs, Inc. has grown into an eight figure business at AOL over the past year and I think it could be a nine figure business if they keep investing in it. Easily.

Netscape has continued to advance and grow since the bottom out in October. It takes 2-3 years to build an online community like Netscape, not three to six months. Social news is the future and Netscape is in first or second position on every important factor in that race (along with digg). To give up now would be such a wasted opportunity (especially since there are 500 folks trying to get into the top five slots right now!). I mean, Conde Nast just bought reddit--a distant 3rd or 4th to Netscape and digg.

Blogsmith is a fantastic platform that could rival TypePad and WordPress in the market place if AOL put some muscle behind it. Brian is a genius and AOL should really pull him in to the senior management team--guys like him don't wind up in big companies often.

Anyway, I've got to get back to my day job... I don't work for AOL anymore but I still spend 2-3 hours a day thinking about and talking to the folks who run those businesses. Giving them advice (solicited and unsolicited), and participating in and using those fine services and products.

Randy & Ron: If you every need any free advice on them or want to grab lunch you know how to reach me. Good luck and please take care of my babies. :-)

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CalacanisCast Beta 5

Jason Calacanis — 2006-11-19T10:14:00+00:00

Filed under: AOL, Blogsmith, Business, Netscape, Podcast, Weblogs, Inc.

CalacanisCast Beta Five... if you have feedback please send me an MP3 or WAV file.

No show notes--ever!

Here is the MP3 file

If you want to subscribe go into iTunes and hit "Advanced -- Subscribe to Podcast" add this feed:

http://podcast.calacanis.com/rss.xml

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Weblogs, Inc/Blogsmith goes mobile!

Jason Calacanis — 2006-09-26T01:05:00+00:00

Filed under: AOL, Blogsmith, Netscape, Weblogs, Inc.

Here is the internal AOL message I just sent to everyone...

Team AOL,

We are blessed to have the greatest, kick-ass, take no prisoner, samurai, rouge, dev team on the planet working for us at Blogsmith/WIN/Netscape.

Today they surprised me by creating a mobile version of all of our sites-- THIS IS NOW A DEFAULT FEATURE IN BLOGSMITH!!!

Create a blog, get a mobile site free! Also, it is autodetect... it knows you're on a mobile phone and sends you to the right place.

w00t!

details here:
http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/26/engadget-done-right-for-your-cellphone/

best j
---------------------
Jason McCabe Calacanis
CEO, Weblogs, Inc., An AOL Company.
GM, Netscape.com
Office: 310-979-5654 | Mobile: 310-456-4900
Blog: http://www.calacanis.com
Yahoo/AOL IM: jasoncalacanis

------------------------------------------

Hey Bloggers,

We are here at CodeJam 7 and adding some very cool features to the platform. One of the first things to be rolled out is Mobile support for WAP enabled devices. This will be rolling out to all blogs but currently it is running on the following blogs:

- Autoblog
- Cinematical
- Download Squad
- Engadget
- Engadget Mobile
- EngadgetHD
- Joystiq
- TUAW
- TV Squad

To view this take your cell phone or PDA and just point to the site as you normally would. We will auto-detect the device and send it a special page.If you have a device that doesn't send correct headers (Like sidekick or PSP) you will be able to manually go to the page by going to m.domainname.com. (but note: this currently isn't working on any blog)

For screenshots of what this looks like check out the following Engadget post:
http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/26/engadget-done-right-for-your-cellphone/

Big thanks to Mike and Matt (our new designer) for designing and rolling this out to all the sites and Brian, Celly and Alex for night-o-crazy-testing!

We have some other neat things in the pipes so stay tuned.

Gavin
Blogsmith Lead Developer

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Comment spam interview...

Jason Calacanis — 2006-04-07T01:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Blogsmith

Someone is writing a story about comment spam... they asked me some questions, and as I normally do here are the answers to their questions:

> - Could you tell me more about the experience of dealing with a spam
> deluge, forcing you to shut down comments. When did this happen, how
> often did this happen?

It's happen like twice in our two year history. Floods of spams come in, we shut down for a couple of hours and block the IPs/emails, flush out the trash, and the bastards go away.

It's not a big deal.

> - Also, does spam affect the business of blogging in actual $$$. You
> mentioned that you have developed technology to combat spam, that
> doesn't come free. Can you share anything in terms of economical,
> financial impact?

Zero financial impact. Comment spam is a non issue for us since we, unlike MoveableType, built Blogsmith (our blog software platform) with advanced comment spam protection.

As I mentioned, the only spam that can really get through our defenses are the ones that are hand rolled by a person, and we catch most of those.

> - Would you compare this blog spam and trackback spam to the world of
> e-mail, where spam fighting has become normal and also a normal expense?

It's not a major expense.

You're making it into this major problem. If you have the right software and you put in simple rules it's not a major issue. The problem is the software makers, combined with blog owners, have not done a horrible good with their software. If you put in simple controls the problem goes away. Folks just don't install the tools to block comment spam.

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