Calacanis plays limp personal attack card against Kevin Rose |
Loading ...What’s next for bulldog-toting Jason Calacanis? His siphon the active digg users plans continue.
Dude reminds me from a publicity perspective of the blogger version of Paris Hilton. Especially with his newest PR blast against Kevin Rose’s so called personal attacks:
On the latest DIGG Nation (minute 8), Digg co-funder Kevin Rose goes on a massive attack of my plans to hire a dozen top social bookmarkers, but he doesn’t seem to have a point about it. I’d actually be interested in hearing what he thinks about paying folks to do social bookmarking, but instead he just personally attacks me.
I just listened to and watched the Diggnation episode segment in question several times and this is clearly one of those cases where having video permalinks would be handy so people could quickly skip past the first eight minutes of beer drinking and bar shilling to get to the bone of contention. These were some high — or low, depending on your perspective — points:
- when Rose reads the dugg story about Calacanis wanting to pay $1,000/month to top content promoters, somebody in the audience yells: “you suck, Jason!” [8:17]
- Rose: “[Jason’s] like: ‘how can I make money?’” [8:21]
- “Step 1 is design a cool website and don’t rip off other people.” - Kevin Rose [8:52]
- “It’s so funny, He [Calacanis] posts this on his personal blog but it’s clearly funded by AOL/Time Warner. A multi-billion dollar company trying to squash digg. It’s bullshit!” - Kevin Rose [9:01]
- Alex Albrecht (clearly being sarcastic): “And they are killing babies too. I heard that.” Prompting somebody in the crowd to yell comically: “I heard that too!” [9:17]
- Alex: “Alright I’m going to play devil’s advocate for a second.” Pause, Rose says: “Ok, go ahead.” And Albrecht replies: “I don’t know, he’s [Calacanis] an idiot.” [9:33]
- Alex: “Even the devil’s down there going: ‘dude, seriously, chill.’”
- “The problem is even if he pays a $1,000 a month to these people, sure he’ll get some good stories but nobody’s digging on your site, man.” [10:40]
- “They’re clearly a little worried.” - Kevin Rose [11:05]
- “Ummm, wasn’t Netscape a browser? Am I crazy? … Is Netscape now like the Alta Vista?” - Albrecht [11:15]
- “Nah, Alta Vista is a bit cooler than Netscape.” - Rose [11:30]
- “Jason Calacanis equals Satan, let’s move on.” - Albrecht [13:05]
As the quotes above clearly show, Rose didn’t personally attack Jason. He mocked what Netscape and Calacanis are doing, sure, but somebody please tell me where are the personal attacks? No “he’s short” cracks or penis inequity slams or anything truly personal. If Jason thinks what Rose did was personal, he’d have a massive heart attack over some highly flammable blog comments I’ve received. Albrecht was more critical than Rose, but it seemed obvious to me both these guys were having a good time, not on some bash Netscape campaign. The piece lasted roughly five minutes, which overall was a small part of the 38:39 show.
At the end of Jason’s post he lectures entrepreneurs:
* For those of you entrepreneurs watching make a note: you know you’re winning when the debate when the other side opts out of the logical discussion and moves to personal attacks.
Was there something more offensive later? I didn’t listen past the end of that segment.
The whole Diggnation crew should thank Calacanis for making a big deal out of absolutely nothing. Even Kevin Rose’s rebuttal blog post isn’t a personal attack and makes good points about the situation:
Think of what your loyal Netscape users must think - you’re essentially telling them that they aren’t good enough and that you have to buy better users. You can have the best submitters in the world, but if your community doesn’t support you it will never work.
Bonus points for Rose for enabling trackbacks on his seldom updated blog while Calacanis’ blog doesn’t. If you see other posts about this dust-up out there, don’t fall for it like I clearly have. I just wasted 30 minutes of my life. Sorry for wasting a minute or two of yours this morning.
Related Posts- AOL loses Calacanis: You’ve Got Bail
- One week of paint on new Netscape beta, Digg still the big story
- Sure, I’ll “keep hating” the new Netscape search, Jason
- Digg receives $2.8 million in VC funding
- New Netscape.com righteous or ripoff of Digg debate begins
- Slashdot Firehose brings readers into story selection process a la digg
From a business perspective though, Jason’s trying to use incentives to gain power user base. I don’t see a problem with that, regardless of the words. Rose is just being a snarky punk like he usually is, but that’s fine too.
While digg is definitely revolutionary, it’s still got some issues. Like I’ve written before, after v3.0 launched, there’s been a rash number of digg posts about… (wait for it…) itself. Sort of pathetic if you ask me. Not to mention I’m reading a lot of the posts now on the same 100+ blogs I track that are ending up on digg after the fact, instead of pre-v3.0 when it was digg that pointed that news out.
There’s a lot of diluted information since digg tried to expand base the geek base. I don’t think it can be done with other sources of news quite as well (in the case of Netscape). Just look at newsvine. It’s ehhh.. okay, but not many people I know use it because it’s just not there. The base doesn’t care as much has the technically inclined crowd.
Personally, I think we’d be better off pre-v3.0 news wise, but with the post 3.0 infrastructure. In an effort to make money, the user base has been weakened. Just my two cents though.
Comment by darkmoon — July 26, 2006 @ 9:09 am PST
Yeah, Newsvine didn’t do it for me either. I agree that quality of digg stories has diminshed since they opened things up more. I’ve noticed a lot more videos being top dugg stories since digg switched to the newer version too.
It’s possible that the people protesting the new netscape will be right: mainstream america might not ready for the digg-type format. It works for the roughly 500,000 digg crowd, but there are a whole lot more people out there.
Comment by TDavid — July 26, 2006 @ 9:33 am PST
I think that it has to be repackaged a bit for mainstream to want it. I mean, what’s the point of say… my mom or dad, to “digg” a news story? I think that’s the key. I suppose celebrity type pics might do it, or rumors of movies and such, but even so the ones that have been set up aren’t doing so well.
I think that’s the problem with digg. From a perspective of technology, it’s empowering the people. But once you apply the business model to it and look for a reason to gain more user base, it loses its attractiveness. Plays against itself basically. I think.. no, I believe that is the reason why Slashdot never opened up to anything but technologically inclined news.
Some technologies were never meant for the mainstream. I think Digg is one of those. It is a generic based technology, but requires the user-base to drive it versus source-driven technologies such as podcasting/vlogging. I think that’s the key that people are missing. The user-base itself has to be well-polished for the technology, but only a few are like that. You might be able to get some sort of MySpace scenario going with Digg for a young people’s POV, but I’m not certain my younger cousins would actually use it. Very tricky market that I personally don’t care to compete in.
Comment by darkmoon — July 26, 2006 @ 9:44 am PST
Although I did not originally start using the new netscape to get paid, I find it appealing to say the least. I am one of the top contributers of the new netscape, and they have not offerd anything to me. Which is fine, I guess. I like some people initially had the thought, “What I am not putting up the right stories or what”, when they started offering money to other people. But then I thought, who cares, I started this while not making money and I will continue even if they never offer me the money. The money would be nice, and lord knows I could use it, its just not a motivating factor for me.
The voting thing is not new. People have been doing it on videos, pictures, and jokes for years. So digg did not create anything. They took the voting idea and added to news, big freaking deal. I am willing to bet that it was done ten years ago during the internet boom, but was forgotten. Personally I used to watch tech tv when the screensavers was on there. But now its called gvtv, and it just sucks royally.
This whole getting paid to bookmark thing is no different then being an affiliate. You get paid to promote a product that you may or may not really like. Anyone who complains that someone is getting paid to do a little work should take all their ads off their blogs and do it for free.
Alls I know is that every story that I have ever submitted to digg is buried instantly, and on netscape I have a ton of stories on the front page. So you tell me which one is more democratic, another example of this kind of thing happening is look at forevergeek. They got banned for badmouthing digg, some democracy oriented site.
Comment by Shane — July 26, 2006 @ 9:51 am PST
Calacanis admitted on Gilmor Gang a recently that this Netscape flap is similar to what he did for Weblogs Inc. That is he is picking a fight just to get Netscape in the news. It worked I had not been to Netscape in years and I went to look.
Both Calacanis and Rose are going to wind up with more page views and I wind up feeling used.
Comment by Paul Benjamin — July 26, 2006 @ 2:19 pm PST
Calacanis motives are very transparent indeed, Paul. Funny though, I still haven’t gone to Netscape today (and won’t be unless somebody else I’m reading points to something there). Haven’t been there in a few days actually. I don’t even know if you can subscribe to a Netscape river of news RSS feed but I continue to follow the one from digg which takes me back to that site daily. It seems to me like Netscape needs to do exactly what Rose is saying to do: work on the site.
I don’t think Rose cares that much about page views for his blog (or were you referring to page hits to digg?). His last blog update was in early June.
Comment by TDavid — July 26, 2006 @ 3:14 pm PST
I don’t think Calacanis or Rose care about their personal blogs. I think that they do care about their meal tickets. Calacanis has to show Warner that he is not another Turner or AOL, a smart internet guy that can’t deliver. Rose is out to make his first big score and get setup for life.
You should go look at the Gilmor Gang podcast, Calacanis made it clear that all he wants is the traffic and picking a fight is the cheapest way for him to get it. There is one good point that has come out of this though and Dave Winer made it at http://www.scripting.com/2006/07/26.html#When:6:04:23AM
Calacanis is a parasite on Digg but it will also help Rose. Calacanis rode it to the bank last time and Rose will do the same this time. Like Dave Winer said, what about the Digg users? Where is their share of the payout? Winer will be missed when he shuts down his blog. A smart guy who is not afraid of calling BS.
Comment by Paul Benjamin — July 26, 2006 @ 3:32 pm PST
Winer isn’t going to stop writing. He might take a mini-vacation but he’s not going to walk away completely from writing somewhere. If he does, then he never really was a writer to begin with, but more like a glorified (and very good, BTW) pointer and commentator. Writing gets in your blood and you do it for reasons other than system, money or circumstance. Quitting his blog doesn’t mean his voice is going away. I think he just wants to find a new outlet and get a fresh start with something else. He’s burned out on scripting news which rarely is about scripting oddly enough.
Comment by TDavid — July 26, 2006 @ 4:32 pm PST
You are probably right about Winer, but the only place I can see his work is on his blog so if it goes away so does he, at least in my world.
On the Calacanis vs. Rose thing I am torn as a regular Digg reader. If I was a top Digger, I am sure not, should I take table scraps from Calacanis or help Rose make his big payout and do it for the good of the other readers? In my world $1000 a month is a good part time job but I am sure that Calacanis and Rose will loose that in the round off error on their bank statements after this fight is long forgotten.
Does money change anything for Digg? Well Rose took the VC cash so I guess he thinks so. Too bad that the people who are pushing the stories into the queue and on to the front page will not get a share of the payout.
Comment by Paul Benjamin — July 26, 2006 @ 5:09 pm PST
[…] 1) Jason Calacanis, now a hired gun for Netscape — which has “Digg-ified” itself — offers to pay posters to submit articles to Netscape 2) Kevin Rose of Digg (now in its 3rd iteration) doesn’t think this is a great idea, and says so in his podcast (and summarized here). 3) Jason Calacanis rebuts via his Blog. […]
Pingback by Deep Jive Interests » Rose vs. Calacanis: Will Poaching Posters be Profitable? — July 27, 2006 @ 12:37 am PST
Why the Digg community isn’t worth $200 million
Read the latest brouhaha about how Digg is worth $200 million and Kevin Rose is $60 million richer in Businessweek. Amusingly enough, it’s all BS mathematics and Digg hype. Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome fame says that KR and his band…
Trackback by LUX.ET.UMBRA — August 5, 2006 @ 10:22 am PST
[…] All kidding aside, good luck in your next venture, Jason. We may not always see eye to eye but I think Calacanis is very talented at stirring up the dust and surrounding himself with good, hard working people. […]
Pingback by AOL loses Calacanis: You’ve Got Bail » Make You Go Hmm — November 17, 2006 @ 11:51 am PST