Disqus - Friends of unitechy

Re: Open Season

jasoncalacanis — Sat, 01 Jan 2000 05:00:00 -0000

Richard,

Shouldn't you be writing fake blogs for Walmart and your other big money clients instead of defending the failures of the PR industry?

Seriously Richard, I know there are some PR folks who do a good job. I've met all both of them in fact, and I really like them. (zing! pow!)

No, seriously... PR folks are really loved by journalists.... love sending them to VOICEMAIL! (zing! pow!).

Seriously, nothing is better when you're on deadline than having to go through a PR person who tries to spin the story and protect their client. It's just sooooo much fun.... we love it!

You can defend PR folks all you want, but you should know that when you're not at the table journalists and bloggers are making fun of you and shaking their heads in disgust at the horrible inefficiency you bring to the world. 99 times out of 100 PR people slow bloggers and journalists down.

I know you've PR 2.0-ed Edelman and you've got a blog (yes!) and some of your folks are using Twitter (wow!), but the fact is the days of PR are numbered. Folks are realizing that spending $15-20k a month on a PR firm is a total waste of money. Better to hire a $40k blogger for your company, and spend the rest on going to a couple of events and being a real human--as opposed to some PR creation.

The best PR is no PR.

Be yourself, be authentic and do great things. If you do that you don't need a PR firm.

If you're lame and inauthentic? Well, then hire Edelman to make you a fake blog like they did for Walmart.

The PR industry has the reputation it has because they've spent decades trying to manipulate the press and public... as the playing field is leveled your access and process becomes worth less and less. A new process is brewing... it's call authenticity and it's everything PR is not.

all the best,

Jason

Re: Open Season

jasoncalacanis — Sat, 01 Jan 2000 05:00:00 -0000

Richard,

Shouldn't you be writing fake blogs for Walmart and your other big money clients instead of defending the failures of the PR industry?

Seriously Richard, I know there are some PR folks who do a good job. I've met all both of them in fact, and I really like them. (zing! pow!)

No, seriously... PR folks are really loved by journalists.... love sending them to VOICEMAIL! (zing! pow!).

Seriously, nothing is better when you're on deadline than having to go through a PR person who tries to spin the story and protect their client. It's just sooooo much fun.... we love it!

The best PR is no PR.

Be yourself, be authentic and do great things. If you do that you don't need a PR firm.

If you're lame and inauthentic? Well, then hire Edelman to make you a fake blog like they did for Walmart.

all the best,

Jason

Re: Open Season

jasoncalacanis — Sat, 01 Jan 2000 05:00:00 -0000

Richard,

Shouldn't you be writing fake blogs for Walmart and your other big money clients instead of defending the failures of the PR industry?

Seriously Richard, I know there are some PR folks who do a good job. I've met all both of them in fact, and I really like them. (zing! pow!)

No, seriously... PR folks are really loved by journalists.... love sending them to VOICEMAIL! (zing! pow!).

Seriously, nothing is better when you're on deadline than having to go through a PR person who tries to spin the story and protect their client. It's just sooooo much fun.... we love it!

The best PR is no PR.

Be yourself, be authentic and do great things. If you do that you don't need a PR firm.

If you're lame and inauthentic? Well, then hire Edelman to make you a fake blog like they did for Walmart.

all the best,

Jason

Re: Kinja Launches (No Fooling, I think....)

jasoncalacanis — Thu, 01 Apr 2004 15:03:37 -0000

We all know about it John... but what do *you* think!?!?!?!?

The world wants to know...

Re: Kinja Launches (No Fooling, I think....)

jasoncalacanis — Thu, 01 Apr 2004 15:03:37 -0000

We all know about it John... but what do *you* think!?!?!?!?

The world wants to know...

Re: Kinja, the blog of blogs

jasoncalacanis — Thu, 01 Apr 2004 15:10:36 -0000

Wow... did you see this? Meg is resigning the day Kinja launches---that is strange.

Re: Kinja, the blog of blogs

jasoncalacanis — Thu, 01 Apr 2004 15:10:44 -0000

Wow... did you see this? Meg is resigning the day Kinja launches---that is strange.
On a personal note, I'm spending another month at Kinja and will be leaving at the end of April. I'm sure I'll have more to say about that in the future, but for now, check out Kinja and some assorted media coverage:

Re: Kinja Launches (No Fooling, I think....)

jasoncalacanis — Thu, 01 Apr 2004 20:03:37 -0000

We all know about it John... but what do *you* think!?!?!?!?

The world wants to know...

Re: Like Honey to Spammers: It's All About Jakob, Baby

jasoncalacanis — Thu, 03 Jun 2004 22:57:57 -0000

One thing you can do to dissuade the spammers is to not link to people's home page from the recent comments section on the left hand tool bar. Just put their name without the link and the spammers will figure it is not worth the trouble... that solve 90% of our problem at WIN.

Re: Like Honey to Spammers: It's All About Jakob, Baby

jasoncalacanis — Thu, 03 Jun 2004 22:57:57 -0000

Re: Like Honey to Spammers: It&aposs All About Jakob, Baby

jasoncalacanis — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 02:57:57 -0000

Re: Calacanis Jumps the Shark?

jasoncalacanis — Fri, 11 Jun 2004 14:09:03 -0000

Jake,

This whole post is insulting, *especially* the parts of the post about my mother and my partner Brian's wife that you have now taken out. If you were so sure of yourself why did you take those sections out?

In the original version of this post (that Jake has now changed), he claimed that mother is a liability for us in terms of quality. He also said my partner's wife is a quality problem.

First, I take this very personal... you don't talk about people's mothers and wives in Brooklyn--not if you're smart. However, all emotions aside:

1. My mother is a Nurse Practitioner with an MBA.

2. My partners wife is a pediatric nurse who specialized in dealing with premature babies, including many babies born with addictions to crack.

Who better to do a blog on babies?

Why are you so harsh on the idea of a blog on babies and parenting?

I used to have great respect for Gothamist.com, and I think Jen is really talented. However, I really don't understand what the point of this story is, and why you are using the quality that editorial that Jen has built up in Gothamist for your jealous, insulting and immature posts at people like Nick Denton and myself.

Jason

PS - I would get into the details of the business, but your thesis is so confused that I'd rather not spend my day educating you.

PSS - You also made a bunch of other little changes to this since your first post to pull it back, thanks for that but I would rather you put up the original and then state your changes then being sneaky and making little changes without telling the audience.

Re: Huh. I suggest...

jasoncalacanis — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 14:52:05 -0000

Glad to hear you got a nice break... couple of easy tips from someone who's been there:

1. Plaxo is also a great way to backup EVERY change in your address book. When I got my new desktop and laptop two months ago I installed Plaxo and in 2 minutes my contacts were tight.

2. I store all my serial numbers for software as contacts so that I can call them up any time. I mean, there is no built in way to save these things so i improvised. So, when i got the two new machines I just reinstalled and pulled my Final Draft serial number from my contact database and started finishing that screenplay I'll never finish again.

best j

Re: Huh. I suggest...

jasoncalacanis — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 14:52:05 -0000

Glad to hear you got a nice break... couple of easy tips from someone who's been there:

1. Plaxo is also a great way to backup EVERY change in your address book. When I got my new desktop and laptop two months ago I installed Plaxo and in 2 minutes my contacts were tight.

best j

Re: Huh. I suggest...

jasoncalacanis — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 18:52:05 -0000

Glad to hear you got a nice break... couple of easy tips from someone who's been there:

1. Plaxo is also a great way to backup EVERY change in your address book. When I got my new desktop and laptop two months ago I installed Plaxo and in 2 minutes my contacts were tight.

best j

Re: Ripped off at the Ritz-Carlton New Orleans

jasoncalacanis — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 00:35:53 -0000

I had the same thing happen at the Ritz and I'm a huge RC fan!!! I got so angry about the charge (it was over $100 for one call!!!) that they took it off... I just kept laying into them at the counter to the point at which I was holding up the line.

I bet they will respond... also, you should name your post Ritz Carlton New Orleans so that when people search for that on google your post comes up.

I did a story about Asurion insurance and now they have to live with my blog post being the second result after their home page on Google!!!

Gotta love blogs...

Feld Comment - I should have yelled louder I guess. Blog title changed - good suggestion

Re: The problem with the blog ethics proposal

jasoncalacanis — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 02:09:47 -0000

I agree with you, and that is why I said on my blog I would be involved in this if there was a group of folks interested in doing it. For me, this is a time consuming thing and I can't/wouldn't do it on my own, or with just Nick and Jeff. If we did this i would want to have a team of 12 or so people to be involved on a some high-level, and perhaps a membership base that voted on who should be involved. so if the membership wanted different leaders they could boot Nick, Jeff or I.

I've got not interest in being in charge of anyone else's business.. I've got enough to do with my own!!!

Re: Blogfather bitch slapped by BzzAgents Blog Spam

jasoncalacanis — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 13:39:38 -0000

Just for the record, I don't know that this is a BzzAgent or a WOMMA person... i just have my suspicions.

Re: Doc Searls disses Denton and Calacanis

jasoncalacanis — Sun, 12 Dec 2004 15:11:53 -0000

I agree with with Doc to a point... our bloggers are not in it for the money, but *almost* everyone needs to pay the rent and put food on the table.

Perhaps Doc is a in a position where he might not have to worry about paying the rent... which is great for him. However, I can tell you our bloggers who are making a living doing what they love are as good as any other blogger out there. In fact, because they can dedicate more time to their blogs they often produces more content and can put more time into the content they do produce.

Docs position sort of leaves fulll-time blogging to the unemployed or the independently wealthy.

Re: Calacanis revises growth figures

jasoncalacanis — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 11:55:40 -0000

Yeah, we took a page from Nick Denton's page book and tried out some larger brands like www.Luxist.com and www.Gadling.com. Those have like 15-50 categories each. So, we have cigars and wine in luxist as opposed to their own brands. We also have scuba and snowboarding in Gadling as opposed to having blogs for those two activities.

IT will be interesting to see which model works better!

best jason

Re: More on social security

jasoncalacanis — Sat, 18 Dec 2004 22:04:20 -0000

We get a lot of traffic, so having trackbacks means that all the spammers in the world would come to our blogs at weblogsinc.com and try and link to their Viagra blogs.

Trackbacks in the blosphere are basically dead... no major blog has them anymore and if they do they are abused to the point of being worthless. I think the best thing to do is just search Technorati, Feedsteer, etc.

Re: Competition, it’s what makes America great

jasoncalacanis — Sat, 08 Jan 2005 19:05:56 -0000

Well, we're doing 3x the traffic of Gizmod and 3-4x the number of posts from the show.
We had nine people here... Nick had one.
so, even with the Gates interview Gizmodo didn't even come close to Engadget's coverage.

Re: It’s not an ‘either-or’ medium, Jason, it’s an ‘and’ medium

jasoncalacanis — Sat, 08 Jan 2005 20:26:13 -0000

uhhhh....
1. that wasn't a public email Jeff. you should ask before printing a personal email.
2. I never said anything bad about Paidcontent or Gizmodo. Both are fine sites.
3. The whole concept of Weblogs, Inc is "and" not "or." If it were or we would not have 70 blogs and 45 bloggers working with us.
4. so, you own options not stock.. great. You still give props to Nick over Weblogs, Inc. at 10 to 1 ratio.
5. you said "Note that you can pretty much cover CES via the PR Newswire." You could, and your coverage would be horrible. We are taking hundreds of images, hours of video and having first hand opinion of the content. You can NOT do that from a press release. Really.
6. You said "So competitors will need to cooperate to make more money, or else advertisers won't bother." We already have put together 70 blogs, so we are doing this right now.
7. You said "Jason is misunderstanding the essence of this new medium. In big, old media -- in the age of the power law -- only the top guy or maybe the top two won because only the top guys could afford the printing press and the marketing budget. It's an 'either-or' industry."
No, I understand the new medium just fine Jeff. My only point is that I think you give Nick tons and tons of props and diss Weblogs, Inc. and Engadget.
anyway, i still love you... just wish you would cash in those options and stop giving Nick all the props... maybe I should just give you some options in Weblogs, Inc?
best j

Re: Blog Editor Foxy-Boxing

jasoncalacanis — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 14:38:43 -0000

>> Don't Launch 6 Blogs At Once. Weblogs Inc. has

>> followed the launch-a-million-blogs-at-once

>> strategy and has ended up with a few

>> moderately-successful blogs and dozens of

>> crappy-designed crappy-named blogs (TUAW??

>> Seriously?).

TUAW has over 25,000 people a day coming to it already. TUAW stands for The Unofficial Apple Weblog, and four letter domains are hard to come by these days... so, I came up with TUAW and I agree it's got some flaws (i.e. how do you say it on the phone, but the site has amazing traffic and it will become the most popular Apple blog this year.

Moderately successful? Really?

Joystiq is the #1 games blog with five times the traffic of the next largest, Kotaku.

Autoblog is the #1 car blog with 3-4x the traffic of the next largest, Jalopnik.

Peter Rojas build Engadget to double the traffic of Gizmodo in just nine months. gizmodo had a like an 18 month google juice lead!

Trust me, getting ahead of Nick who can spike any blog to 100,000 page views a day with a Fleshbot or Gawker link (and he does so every week) is NOT easy. Nick's was the original master of this game and keeping up with him--let alone beating him--is hard, hard work...he's got a lot of cash, great style, a PR machine, and years and years of google juice.

so, if you thinking beating the master in all the blogs in which you are aligned is moderate success what is success??!?!?! What is very successful?!?

We've got a whole stable of blogs with over 1M page views, a bunch with over 500,000, and we have 71 active bloggers in the network now. We have exactly the same traffic overall of Gawker in January--and we don't have a porn blog like Fleshbot as half our traffic!!!

Sure, the ninche blogs are dull to people not into that niche... but as you can see from Gadling and Luxist we are learning about style and getting good domain names. I'm a quick study you know. :-)

The truth is the market for things like Fishbowl and Gawker is tiny... Gawker makes 1/10th or 1/20th the amount as Gizmodo. Following Nick with Gawker is following Nick off a cliff.

Nick does Gawker to have a tool to work the media... he gets to write about the people who write about him--that is brilliant. It's not a business.

Local vertical sites are never going to get big or be big businesses. Trust me, I ran Silicon Alley Reporter which we NY+Internet as opposed to NY+Media and it became a huge local business with $12M in revenue at the peak. If you look at that number however, it was a lot of events and a lot of dotcom money which doesn't exist any more.

Who is going to advertise on Gawker or FishbowlNY? I always do a test when I launch a brand... I look for the analog... and with Fishbowl and Gawker the analogs are Folio Magazine and Spy Magazine. I love(d) both but they both struggled and they both sucked as businesses--and they were national!!!

Perhaps a local blog like MetBlogs or Gothamist can become an OK to nice business, like New York or Chicago magazine are, but when you limit them to local + a vertical you don't have a huge business.

best j

Re: About?

jasoncalacanis — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 18:00:27 -0000

we have 71 bloggers and 74 blogs... we are 20-25% the size in terms of those numbers.
In terms of traffic... well, that is another story.
however, you are right... Gawker and WIN are next generation About.com's to a certain extent.