Kevin Rose dugg us!! http://www.digg.com/tech_news/Mahalo_We_re_here_to_help
Today my team launched our latest project Mahalo.com. It's a human-powered search engine. We've already completed the top 4,000 search terms on the Internet and we hope to do 10,000 by the end of the year.

Our Mission: To help people.... a lot.

Please take a look at our results and compare the ones we have side by side with machine powered search by folks like Google, Ask, Yahoo, Technorati, AOL, and MSN. I think you'll find that humans can really help make search results better.

Feedback is not only welcome, I'm begging you for it! That's the whole point of our ALPAH: Tell us how to make search suck less! We're listening and we want to help... in fact, our tag line is "We're here to help!" The comments below are open so have at it, or post your thought to your own blog and I'll link to your comments (keep them constructive of course).

Here's the press release for today's launch, which took place at the Wall Street Journal's D Conference (thank Kara and Walt for including me in such an amazing event!). It also has details of our funding including our lead investors Sequoia Capital, Elon Musk, and Newscorp.

You'll probably be able to find some more feedback on the Mahalo project at these links over the next two days:

Google Blog Search
Technorati Blog Search
TechMeme
Google News
and at http://www.mahalo.com/mahalo_press_coverage

If you're with the media, a blogger, or podcaster and would like to schedule an interview please feel free to email media at mahalo dot com.

I post some photos over at Flickr... let's hear your comments on the photos (over there, not here!)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasoncalacanis/

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

No show notes--ever!

Here is the MP3 file

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Did a quick podcast last night to talk about how I'm feeling. I've got a bad cold, so excuse my coughing/hacking.

CalacanisCast Beta Four... MP3 file.

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Got a great reaction to the BetaCast yesterday that I figured I would bang out another one today really quick... no show notes (if you want to write them in the comment go for it!). CalacanisCast Beta episode two.

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

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In case you missed it Delicious redesigned (see above) and they took a page from both Netscape and digg.

From digg they borrowed the prominent number of votes/bookmarks, and from Netscape they borrowed the thumbnail image with each story.

The irony of course is that digg was inspired by the delicious bookmark, and Netscape was inspired by both netscape, digg, and reddit (which doesn't get enough credit in my book--their services is really great). Of course, when we launched everyone was like "you stole digg's idea!" I found this very entertaining since Kevin at digg is always a standup guy and credit Josh at delicious with the entire idea for digg!

The bottom line is that no one has any ownership over the concept of voting and social news--we're all standing on the shoulders of the first wave of slashdot, furl, and fark.

The thing I love about this industry, and the competition in it, is that we all make each other better. digg, Netscape, delicious, and reddit are all innovating at a faster rate, and a huge company like TimeWarner/AOL coming into the space with the new Netscape does nothing but validate the space.

Folks used to make a big deal about Nick Denton and I being in competition with each other back in the Weblogs, Inc. vs. Gawker days. The truth is that Weblogs, Inc. made Nick get more focused, and both teams built the space. Almost every advertisers that Nick convinced to advertise on Gizmodo wound up on Engadget and vica versa. Today media buyers frequently do an Engadget/Gizmodo buy.

That's the next phase of the "battle" between the social news sites: convincing advertisers to come into the space. I've started making the rounds and explaining the opportunity to media buyers. Every time I explain Netscape to them I'm paving the way digg, reddit, and delicious to get the same advertiser--and that's great. I'm sure John Battelle is out there pitching digg, and every time someone makes a buy on digg they are primed to understand and buy on Netscape and reddit.

It's a beautiful, beautiful thing...

We are looking for a couple of more developers for our Netscape team. At Weblogs, Inc., Blogsmith, and Netscape we let our team members work from home or at an office (we have a lot of offices at AOL). So, if you are some amazing developer and you left SF, NY, WA, etc. and you're doing consulting work this might be a great gig for you. All the benefit of living outside the big city, but you get the benefits, salary, and perks of being a f/t staffer. Of course, you have to be willing to travel to our CodeJams and staff meetings, but those are monthly/quarterly typically.

CK has details here: http://www.sampletheweb.com/2006/08/21/netscape-is-looking-for-a-few-good-people/

There is a short story in the NYT today about a small, but vocal, group of Netscape users who don't like the new, more interactive, Netscape. The story explains that a petition has been started to change the new Netscape back to the old Netscape where we (AOL) programmed the experience.

There is one piece of misinformation in the story: that we tried to silence the folks doing the petition by not letting them vote up negative Netscape stories on the new Netscape--that's simply not true. We've had a dozen negative stories about Netscape on the home page--just like DIGG has--and we understand that part of running a social news site is that your user base will use the site itself to talk to you. In fact, any negative story on AOL, Netscape, or myself immediatly goes to the number one position.

That's the price you pay for letting folks take control--they actually do it!

I think some folks don't understand that there is a window in which a story can remain on the homepage (just over a day). We do this so the news stays fresh (i.e. when you come back 24 hours later it's not the same self-propogating list stuck at the top level).

I respect the fact that a group of folks liked the original home page better, and they don't want to participate in the new social news site--it's not for everyone. However, this is a very small percentage of the over millions of unique users who come to Netscape, and for AOL there is a very strategic reason for evolving Netscape.com. That reason is we already have a professionally programmed portal in AOL.COM! Also, we told the users about the change for a month, but some folks I think ignored or missed the messaging. That's a big take away here: over communicate with your members (oh wait, I put this in a recent post--I guess I need to take more of my own advice). If I were to do this again I would put a message that blocked users from visiting the site until they had read a note about the upcoming changes. Live and learn.

Additionally, the fact was that the majority of users were not sticking with the old Netscape. A quick look at the stats (not Alexia please--it doesn't count the Netscape browser--where a large percentage of our traffic comes from) shows that Netscape lost 1/3rd of its audience over the past year.

So, we lost a third of the audience by not changing the site, and now by changing we're going to lose a very small percentage, but be back on a growth path.

Look at it this way: if Geocities could change itself to MySpace before losing it's marketshare to MySpace you would do that right?

Same thing here, we're in the middle of paradigm shift from top-down control to bottom-up participation, and when you make a radical change like that you're gonna get pushback. In fact, I'm really excited to see the pushback because it let's me know we are on the right track.

Any new service is gonna get folks who don't like it. The more radical or forward looking an idea is the more folks are gonna be shocked by it--and this is a radical (but soon-to-be established) concept.

We anticipated in our projections that a large percentage of the audience might not like the new portal (double digits) and we're well below that (single digits)--so, I think we did a good job. When you change the menu at your restaurant some folks are gonna like the old menu better... we understand that and we're sorry we can't maintain two versions of the site forever--but this is a business and we have to grow it. For those folks the AOL.COM portal is still providing the classic portal experience with a massive amount of new stuff including a ton of video and programmed news.

It is ironic, of course, that some folks are voting for *less* interactivity and control, but I understand it. I don't want the New York Times to be a social news site... I think.

I guess the 3.0 in DIGG 3.0 means three ads above the fold! We got our butts kicked by DIGG users for having two ads above the fold--I wonder if they'll slam Kevin Rose for putting *three* ads above the fold--OUCH!!!

Note: The TOS (top of service) has only one advertisement, a leaderboard. Smart move... go light on top level ads, make it back on the second level. We're doing something similar (this is the Google School of Design btw).

Update: They are also doing graphical ads... not just text for those folks who said they don't do graphical ads. See first shot below.

Bunch of Netscape updates happening this weekend:

The Role of Anchors: WE ARE HERE TO SERVE.
There seems to be some misinformation spreading about the role of the Netscape Anchors. The Anchors do NOT filter the results or control the site. The Netscape Anchors are HERE TO SERVE the members. If the members vote a story to the top 10 our Netscape Anchors will add an image for them and do some meta-journalism on the site. WE ARE HERE TO SERVE, NOT TO CONTROL. We are your editorial concierges. If you want followup on a story we do it for you immediately. The Anchors can vote on stories of course, but their votes count for as much as the publics do.

The home page ranking
We tweaked the velocity (how fast things go up the page) and gravity (how quick they go down the page) formulas and the results are looking good. This is a real art/science procedure... you're basically turning a bunch of dials to see which one gets the best result in terms of speed vs. quality. It's really amazing.

% of advertising, and designing for the mass vs. the (Delicious/DIGG) elite.
We've got the site down to almost no advertising right now. People attacked us for having five ad units at launch and they were right--it was over the top. We're going to keep it light for the beta and I think we will wind up with three advertisements (like the New York Times) at the end of the day. I'm thinking a leaderboard and medium rectangle above the fold and a skyscaper below the fold. The DIGGsters have been beating me up for the number of ads and the cluttered nature of the site, which I can appreciate. DIGGsters like myself love clean design (or no design). However, the mass audience likes a lot of design and images--they even like ads. So, we're gonna do something for our DIGGsters/clean design folks as an alternative to the current home page.

On killing DIGG ad the Jason vs. Kevin silliness.
I've been in this business since two years before it started (1993/94). I've watched pronouncement after pronouncement about Microsoft-, Netscape-, Yahoo-, and Google-killers. Heck, people have talked about AOL-killers since we launched and it has never seemed to happen (and as long as I'm here it's not gonna happen I can tell you that!).

The fact is, we've evolved the work done by DIGG by bringing an editorial layer to Kevin's community model. Kevin's community model was, of course, based on Josh's bookmarking model at Delicious. Delicious was inspired by Flickr tagging and Furl's group bookmarking, and Furl was inspired by the *dozens* of bookmarking sites that were around in the Web 1.0 days.

DIGG didn't create voting or social bookmarking--they just did it best. They evolved the entire concept, and that is what *GREAT* entrepreneurs do: they build a better mousetrap. There are no original ideas in this world, only ideas to be evolved.

After everyone calms down about the size of Netscape (12M uniques a month) vs. the scrappy upstart DIGG, they will realize that us launching Netscape has tripled the value of DIGG. Yahoo, Microsoft, and Fox are now thinking "if this works for AOL/Netscape we gotta get into the space." When they do they will look and see that the best way to win the race will be not to build but to buy DIGG--heck, if this model works I could see AOL offering to buy DIGG to consolidate the market. So, it's not like AOL has been taken out of the race to buy DIGG or other social bookmarking sites. I think this space is the future, and I could see us owning seven different social bookmarking sites some day--just like we own dozens of content /services like TMZ, Engadget, TVSquad, MoviePhone, Mapquest, etc.

We are going to bring the social news concept to more people than DIGG ever could, and those users will become DIGG users as well (like I am). This is not a winner take all space--very few spaces ever are in fact. Hotmail/Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and AOL all share the IM and email markets. The news market online is shared by dozens of folks. To think that Netscape would crush DIGG, or that DIGG would crush Delicious is silly. It's what the silly inexperienced bloggers think.

A rising tide does lift all boats.

You can check what happened when Weblogs, Inc. joined Gawker Media in the professional blogging space--we both go much bigger. Nick Denton became a better entrepreneur when we came into the space. He got more focused, he staffed up, and the competition made us both stronger. It also made for a better product for the users.

Advertisers that Nick sold on blogging bought ads on Weblogs, Inc--and visa versa. I would say that Gizmodo and Engadget shared 50% of their advertisers at one point. Nick and I discussed group selling once in fact (we didn't need to because we both had f/t staff).

-- Kevin and the crew are dedicated to the community model of social news.
-- My team at Netscape are dedicated to the community model of social news with a term of Anchors to serve the users.
-- Google News is dedicated to solving the new aggregation problem with better algorithms.
-- Rojo is dedicated to solving the social news problem with an aggregation + tags model.
-- Newsvine is dedicated to solving the social news problem with news feeds + bloggng + voting.

If this is a real industry we will all get there *together*, and when we do we will all slap each others backs while drinking aged scotch and fine cigars at some outdoor cafe five years from now. We'll talk about the good old days and laugh. I do that right now with Tom from @NY (my Silicon Alley "rival") and Nick Denton (my blogging rival).

Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing are best friends even though they fought like gladiators for over a decade. Competitors share a deep bond--they are the only people who experience the war from the inside, and as a result they are forever one with the experience.

I love Kevin, I love Josh at Delicious, I love both of their sites and admire what they've accomplished. Their not competitors, they're compadres.

Bottom line: we're all in this together and we'll either make it as a group or none of us will make it--let the games begin!

I targeted three people to blog for us when we started WIN: Peter Rojas, Malcolm Gladwell, and Elizabeth Spiers. Peter signed up, Gladwell wasn't into blogging (at the time), and Spiers told me she was done with blogging. She made the Gawker brand before disappeared at New York Magazine for a while . Then she doubled MediaBistro's traffic *instantly* with her FishBowl series of blogs (you can check the Alexa charts on that one).

Now she's about to launch her own Weblogs, Inc/Gawker.. the first blog is called DealBreaker and IWantMedia interviews her about it today. In the interview she calls out Denton's publishing philosphy: "Turn up the level of harshness and make it meaner, and people will pay more attention."

Anway, if I could buy stock in a person I would buy EZSP... (insert Jim Cramer's back-up the truck sound from Mad Money).

I'll be speaking at the VON conference tomorrow in San Jose. Details here.