These "blog strip ads" are just stunning... I love them. I take it this isn't an IAB.NET standard yet right?

Looks like 1,000 x 250 pixels... HUGE!

Team Weblogs, Inc: Let's do these!!!

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. :-)

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

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).

Your pal,

Jason

PS - Thanks to everyone sending emails, IMing, and calling.

Update: Fun times from Hugh... and my partner Brian Alvey always has quip ready to go!

We're up, we're down... we gotta keep getting better. Fankly, this is very simple: we must worship our users. We have to love them more than Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft.

How do you show love in our world? Let me count the ways:

1. More disk space
2. Better screen real estate
3. Faster servers
4. Better editorial
5. More features
   
6. More support
7. Better design
8. Less ads
9. Less annoying ads
10. Less obnoxious ads
11. More targeted ads
12. Take that which is paid and make it free
    
13. Anticipate members needs and fill them
    
14. Surprise members with fun, new experiences
15. Communicate with members open and freely
16. Listen to members--then listen to them some more
17. Treat members how you would like to be treated
18. Be honest with members--always
    
19. Don't do anything sneaky because a) members are smart and will bust you, b) life is so short--why would you want to be a sneak?, and c) this is a long-term business, the short term is meaningless.
    
20. Respect your members wishes above all else. If they don't love you any more that is their choice, and it's an opportunity for you to reflect on why they don't love you (consider it a free focus group)
21. Let people consume your product on their terms with their software, browser, device, hardware or operating system (this is also known as the "don't be Microsoft rule").

Seth replies to my "Newsvine/Squidoo doing the MLM thing" post.

Seth says "Neal is correct. This isn't MLM, not by any definition (not that there's anything wrong with that.) You are entitled to your opinion, whether I like it or not, but your facts are wrong."

Squidoo's email offers:

"2. Refer a friend, get $5. When someone you've referred earns her first $15, you and she BOTH get an extra $5. Find out more here: http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/refer"

Wikipedia defines MLM as:

"In a typical multi-level marketing or network marketing arrangement, individuals associate with a parent company as an independent contractor and are compensated based on their sales of products or service (as well as the sales achieved by those they bring into the business).

I rest my case.

Seth does say he doesn't have a problem with MLM, so I'm not trying to pull a "gotch," nor can I. I'm just saying I don't like the talent that MLM programs draw.

Being the brilliant marketing maven Seth is I'm sure he loves MLM stuff (of course Seth is the same guy who defended the Buzz companies who's contractors were involved in deception back when).

As a publisher I *hate* MLM programs (schemes) because they draw the wacky people of the world. I'm all about the long tail, we based our business on it, however you get way down that tail and things can get really scary. There are a lot of freaks at the end of the long tail. The best producers don't need to play MLM games because they can command straight up fees. Why would they produce stuff for contingent/MLM compensation? I don't see it. In fact, Seth had a post yesterday about folks not being motivated by money.

Seth gives a couple of Squidoo sites saying "There is nothing on gizmodo or about like this, is there?"

http://www.squidoo.com/teajunkie/
http://www.squidoo.com/reymysterio/
http://www.squidoo.com/moleskines/

Nope, you won't find niche blogs/publications about one brand of notepad or individual wrestlers. However I'm sure there are some solid tea publications out there (anyone know the leading tea pubs?).

The problem with hyper-niche pubs is that they don't change enough and the readers don't need them often enough. Now, I'm sure Squidoo can make a nice business out of getting tens of thousands of people to make hundreds of thousands of these--provided that they are indexed well into the Google. However, it is doubtful that these tiny pubs will ever make any serious money for the folks who build them. Of course, the folks building these are doing it out of passion in large part (I guess).

I'm fascinated by Squidoo, it's a great mashup of a bunch of models (Wikipedia, About.com, Webogs, Inc)... I'm just don't think MLM stuff will work.

Update: Hugh's take on all this:

• On the heals of YouTube cleaning up its act, MySpace will delete 200,000 objectionable profiles. Ross comments on making the Space more advertiser friendly--very, very smart move.
  
• The PVR is the network--wow.
• Apple *desktop* marketshare has been cut in half since Jobs became CEO... misleading headline since Apple is doing better than ever in terms of the overall health of the company. In related note, how would you like to be the CEO of Disney and have Steve Jobs show up at the next board meeting?!?! Oh to be a fly on that wall.
  
• John Battelle begs the founders of Facebook to take the money--spoken like a true vet who got hit hard when the bubbles popped. JBAT was at WIRED which had an IPO killed twice, and at the Industry Standard which he says turned down a similar offer (so that means the Standard got a ~1B offer and they didn't take it.... ouch!). I hear ya buddy... I've had three phone calls with entrepreneurs who've been offered 5-30M for their startups in the past month. My advice to all of them: sell now, Internet winter is coming. Here is how the conversation went with one of my friends:
  

Me: "Have you ever sold a company?"

Friend with offer: "No."

Me: "Do you TKTK million in you bank account right now?"

FWO: "No."

Me: "Are your parents going to put TKTK million in your bank account any time soon? Do you have a trust fund?"

FWO: "Uhhh... no."

Me: "Take the money."

FWO: "But what if I sell to early?"

Me: "Then you've done your job. You have three options in life: sell too early, sell exactly at the right moment, or sell too late. You want to be part of the first two groups--not the last group. And, history is the only thing that can tell you if you're in group 1 or 2. Trust me, I spent my life in group 3, now I'm part of group 1, and maybe some day I'll be able to join Mark Cuban in group 2. Heck, folks may look back at the blogging movement and say that we were in group #2. It's a process, and if you're a first time entrepreneur you take the money and hope the distance between group 1 and 2 isn't that big. Risk, reward."

Me (still going): "Trust me, get one under your belt--it changes everything. I get 10 calls a week from VCs asking me to invest in my next company... it's like the movie business: once you've made one movie your chances of doing a second movie go up exponentially."

[ Note: Mark had a solid sale before he had Broadcast.com, so when Microsoft offered him ~$100 for Broadcast.com he could walk away from it. That's the position you want to be in. Having a win under your belt changes *everything.* ]

Chris has been an amazing editor at WIRED--perhaps the best ever. However, it's clear to me that editing WIRED is just a stepping stone for him on his way to starting his own blog network. :-)

In a related story, world-famous VC Fred Wilson is coming to work at Engadget.

To recap the major trends: Magazine editors, VCs, and movie stars want to be bloggers, and Internet entrepreneurs want to make movies. The grass is always greener I guess.

This event is gonna be great.... anyone coming?

Wednesday, March 22, 7:00pm
The Home of Lawrence Bender
Bel Air, CA

CENSORING THE INTERNET

Speakers: Jonathan Zittrain, Scott Moore, Jason Calacanis, Stephen Hsu, Jeff O'Brien

The Internet has created an unparalleled crisis for totalitarian and repressive regimes worldwide. While China can bully American search engine companies into censoring results, the U.S. gov't is censoring left-wing news sources from troops in Iraq. But as with all technology there is a cat-and-mouse game using new tools and techniques to censor and subvert censorship: all made by U.S. companies. What responsibility does a U.S. company have in selling software to repress foreign citizens? Will new U.S. laws regarding China kill American access to the world's largest economy? Join us as five of the world's foremost Internet experts examine the censorship issue and how it could affect our lives.

Did a fun interview with Ewan Spence at BarCampLA Sunday.

Have no idea what this list is about... but Peter is #1 and I'm #2.

That makes sense to me. :-)

Whoa... four years later Peter starts a personal blog!

My old pal Tristan does a great job debunking the myth of the blogging A-List (which redeems him for the insane "value your blog based on inbound links" post :-).

The fact is the top 100 blogs represent < .01% of the traffic in the entire blogosphere... in what other medium do the top 100 artists account for the minority of the work??!?! Chris... any ideas here?!?!

Anyone can break into the "blogging A-list" in about six to 12 months if they a) blog every day and b) have something intelligent to add to the conversation.

Nice job Tristan

My pal Eric Rice pointed out that Podshow was deep linking to us without credit, which as everyone knows is a big no-no. Here is an example.

As Adam points out, we're old friends from the Silicon Alley days and we spoke today about it. I gave him some simple suggestion for linking into our stuff, and he assured me it was just a speed error (which I'm sure is the case). The simple solutions is, of course, to put a box that credits the publisher with two or three lines/points:

• The Engadget podast is produced by Weblogs, Inc.
• The RSS feed for the Engadget podcast can be found here.

We're fine with being in anyone's directory as long as we're credited as the owners of the work and have the standard link back.

Wow... this is great! I thought Engadget Mobile would do 10-20k pages a day out of the gate, boy was I wrong! 45k in day one and 75k in day two. This is our largest launch ever--even bigger than Engadget itself.

If you want to enter to win a Treo 700w we're giving a phone a day away--for 30 days (15k in promotional costs to launch a blog--not a huge budget, but it certainly helps).