Maybe Jason Calacanis isn't being totally honest about Mahalo? • Hacker News Board

Re: Maybe Jason Calacanis isn't being totally honest about Mahalo?

#31

Post by jasonmcalacanis » Mon, Jun 21, 2010, 4:07 PM UTC

covercash wrote: post #23

covercash wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a fake account? I thought this was Jason's HN account: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jasonmcalacanis

Looks like it is Jason... verified via Twitter: https://twitter.com/jason/status/16702228671

back on my old account... had linked that to Facebook, so had to activate my FB account to login reset password, deactivate again, etc.

will post under this one going forward.

Re: Maybe Jason Calacanis isn't being totally honest about Mahalo?

#32

Post by axod » Mon, Jun 21, 2010, 4:09 PM UTC

jcalacanis wrote: post #24

nailer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alas people who visit Mahalo for no other reason than Jason's linkfarm directed their search their may not hate the site, although the person running the site with real content does.

Take a look at the how to play guitar chords page... it's everything you would want if you did that search. people stay on that page for 20-60 minutes!!! and there are 50 people on that page all the time learning to play guitar chords. sorry it's not how to set up a cassandra cluster, but it is of value to people learning to do something basic. best jcal

Cool. If that's the case, if they get everything they need from that page, you can safely remove all of the adsense plastered all over the page right? Since people are sitting on that page learning to play chords, and the content is so awesome.

Re: Maybe Jason Calacanis isn't being totally honest about Mahalo?

#33

Post by jasonmcalacanis » Mon, Jun 21, 2010, 4:10 PM UTC

Let's talk about something more interesting:

1. Open Angel Forum has gotten a dozen startups funded. 2. Open Angel Forum is now in eight cities, and will be in San Francisco this Thursday. 3. The Launch Conference next winter will be a platform for 30-50 startups to launch AND raise their seed/A-rounds.

These SEO attacks are absurd at this point... I may be outspoken, but this is a slam job done by a group of SEOs who have it out for me. It's sad that they can take over HackerNews so easily.

Re: Maybe Jason Calacanis isn't being totally honest about Mahalo?

#34

Post by ashu » Mon, Jun 21, 2010, 4:12 PM UTC

jcalacanis wrote: post #25

axod wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-make-strawberry-shortcake has 4 adsense units on it. Adsense says you're allowed a maximum of 3. Something I'm missing? Or is there some special Google deal by which you can add more than 3 and get away with it? In terms of user experience, I think the ratio of content to adverts on that page (Which you seem to cite as a good page) is way out. Tons of adverts / cross promotion etc,…

Google gives permission to some sites to do more. we are one of those sites.

People: parent is a factoid. What's the point in downvoting that?

Re: Maybe Jason Calacanis isn't being totally honest about Mahalo?

#35

Post by dasil003 » Mon, Jun 21, 2010, 4:16 PM UTC

jasonmcalacanis wrote: post #33

Let's talk about something more interesting: 1. Open Angel Forum has gotten a dozen startups funded. 2. Open Angel Forum is now in eight cities, and will be in San Francisco this Thursday. 3. The Launch Conference next winter will be a platform for 30-50 startups to launch AND raise their seed/A-rounds. These SEO attacks are absurd at this point... I may be outspoken, but this is a slam job done by a group of SEOs wh…

There's no conspiracy, the facts speak for themselves. I admire your tenacity in responding to these posts, but you've had a bit too much of your own koolaid. Mahalo doesn't pass the smell test, period.

Re: Maybe Jason Calacanis isn't being totally honest about Mahalo?

#36

Post by ashu » Mon, Jun 21, 2010, 4:20 PM UTC

jasonmcalacanis wrote: post #33

Let's talk about something more interesting: 1. Open Angel Forum has gotten a dozen startups funded. 2. Open Angel Forum is now in eight cities, and will be in San Francisco this Thursday. 3. The Launch Conference next winter will be a platform for 30-50 startups to launch AND raise their seed/A-rounds. These SEO attacks are absurd at this point... I may be outspoken, but this is a slam job done by a group of SEOs wh…

As a completely independent observer having no stakes in this game, I think that the facts absolutely don't point this way. None of your "arguments" has explicitly refuted the attacks. All refutations have been shown (with proof) to be invalid.

Finally, it just does not seem like all that plastered excessive AdSense is doing the Internet any good at all. What value are you providing there, exactly? If those are just pages which don't get much traffic, you could just remove the AdSense from there and the world will thank you for it.

Re: Maybe Jason Calacanis isn't being totally honest about Mahalo?

#37

Post by axod » Mon, Jun 21, 2010, 4:27 PM UTC

jasonmcalacanis wrote: post #33

Let's talk about something more interesting: 1. Open Angel Forum has gotten a dozen startups funded. 2. Open Angel Forum is now in eight cities, and will be in San Francisco this Thursday. 3. The Launch Conference next winter will be a platform for 30-50 startups to launch AND raise their seed/A-rounds. These SEO attacks are absurd at this point... I may be outspoken, but this is a slam job done by a group of SEOs wh…

Do you really hold up the pages you post from Mahalo as a shining beacon of something you want to be known for?

Pages full of auto-generated content and ads which you have managed to get Google to index?

I'd understand if you were desperate for cash and needed the adsense revenue, but surely it'd be better to create a site that has some sort of quality content that you can be proud of?

Ignore the "SEO Attacks" stuff.

* You automatically create pages with no real content * You plaster them with ads * You get them indexed by Google

That doesn't seem to me to be something good for the web.

Re: Maybe Jason Calacanis isn't being totally honest about Mahalo?

#38

Post by illumin8 » Mon, Jun 21, 2010, 4:30 PM UTC

jeremymcanally wrote: post #10

rit wrote: post #6

This obsession with Calacanis/Mahalo is becoming a Hacker News tic along the lines of the reddit obsession with Bacon/Narwhals/Keanu Reeves. Most of the content is regurgitated as well. If you have such an issue with Mahalo and/or Mr. Calacanis: STOP PAYING ATTENTION TO THEM. Nothing dooms a site to the shadows of history like being completely and utterly forgotten.

That would be great if Google would forget them. Occasionally I'll search for something and see a Mahalo page that seems to have at least a pointer to what I need, when in reality I'm just inundated with AdSense and the content that seemed to be there either isn't anymore or never was (i.e., it was a crappily autogenerated page that has an intro paragraph seemingly from someone's blog or something with no link or oth…

The pages I get in my Google results from Mahalo seem to be along the same lines as the Experts Exchange pages you get. Annoying pages with crap ads all over them that just clog up your results.

Google should just blacklist the entire domain and be done with it. Do they really provide any value to the Internet at all?

Re: Maybe Jason Calacanis isn't being totally honest about Mahalo?

#39

Post by illumin8 » Mon, Jun 21, 2010, 4:32 PM UTC

jcalacanis wrote: post #24

nailer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alas people who visit Mahalo for no other reason than Jason's linkfarm directed their search their may not hate the site, although the person running the site with real content does.

Take a look at the how to play guitar chords page... it's everything you would want if you did that search. people stay on that page for 20-60 minutes!!! and there are 50 people on that page all the time learning to play guitar chords. sorry it's not how to set up a cassandra cluster, but it is of value to people learning to do something basic. best jcal

Nice. Who did you steal the content from? Or do you just, out of the goodness of your heart, pay a professional guitar player to write content for you and give it away to the Internet for free?

Re: Maybe Jason Calacanis isn't being totally honest about Mahalo?

#40

Post by what » Mon, Jun 21, 2010, 4:59 PM UTC

jcalacanis wrote: post #13

rit wrote: post #6

This obsession with Calacanis/Mahalo is becoming a Hacker News tic along the lines of the reddit obsession with Bacon/Narwhals/Keanu Reeves. Most of the content is regurgitated as well. If you have such an issue with Mahalo and/or Mr. Calacanis: STOP PAYING ATTENTION TO THEM. Nothing dooms a site to the shadows of history like being completely and utterly forgotten.

Thank you.... and I agree. We are 100% SEO compliment to best practices and we delete/deindex/build out any community pages that are short every month. Google Knol, Wikipedia, About.com, eHow and Associated Content don't do this! We are uber agressive about removing short pages, and investing thousands of dollars in top pages. like these two: http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-make-strawberry-shortcake http://www.mahalo.co…

I certainly hope you didn't invest much into that strawberry shortcake page. It just tells you to pile some sliced strawberries onto a premade cake. The first two paragraphs say the same thing, probably one is a rewrite of the other. Top quality stuff. Then it's scattered with links to pages with no content and lots of ads.