Jason Calacanis, love him or hate him, is a poster boy for making money from blogs. Weblogs Inc, now owned by AOL-TimeWarner of course, is one of those storied parts of the blogosphere. I think (I hope) there is going to be a complete recording of this session because the stuff Jason is talking about is cool. Very interesting. Ah he's telling stories because he didn't prepare a presentation ... the truth comes out. Lots of intersections ... Nick Denton and Gawker, MySpace, Mark Cuban, selling to Time.
OMG! The YouTube moment of the day ... Calacanis doing Nick Denton. God I hope it makes it up.
Jason relating about telling AOL, you can't edit bloggers. Social misfits who couldn't make it anywhere else ...
Be an A-list blogger:
- Go to Techememe
- Blog something intelligent about the top story of the day
- Link to and mention all the people who have said something intelligent
- Repeat for 30 days
- Go to a couple conferences a month
- You're an A-list blogger.
The blogosphere is the ultimate meritocracy ... "It's not broken, you suck" (when someone complains that they don't get traffic).
You write, you write well, you post often (that really is the key), leave good comments on blogs ... you will succeed. Yes, this is very true and actually good advice.
Forces of Evil (gee hope I'm not one of them ... don't think I am, am I) ...
I'm not because it's Pay-Per-Post. You take money or stuff and don't disclose it, that's lying. And I totally agree. I do get free software licenses to try. Sometimes I like them, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I like the software, but decide not to use it. You know what? I'll tell you when I do (examples: MindManager ... use love ... would buy, ActiveWords ... used, liked, stopped using it, Propaganda, use, love, would buy, GyroQ, use, really love, would buy).
The whole basis of the arguement, again which I agree with, is that requiring only a good review, requiring non-disclosure, that's wrong. Yes, Dave I know there are shades to all of this, I'm talking about the specifics of above, not all the stuff about are you nicer to the companies your friends and family work for.
YouTube: Maybe they should give some of the money back to the content providers. And I totally agree with that.
Final quote: "Don't let anybody (speaking of advertising) get into the blog post, it's sacred." A perfect ending to an awesome keynote.
Update: Jason has blogged about his keynote and linked to some of the others talking about it. You can also follow the discussion on Techmeme
Tags: BBS, BBS06, Jason Calacanis keynote, Jason Calacanis