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A Week After Google Changes Algo, Mahalo Fires 10% of Staff

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Re: A Week After Google Changes Algo, Mahalo Fires 10% of Staff

#101

Post by shareme »

jasonmcalacanis wrote: post #60
staunch wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You like brutal honesty and you put yourself out there, so I think it's fair to ask you. Why don't you leave your role at Mahalo and do what you're the absolute best at? (TWiST, LAUNCH Conf, TC competitor)? Plenty of people can do a video eHow, but almost no one else could rival TC. It seems like a pride/ego/money thing from the outside. Is it something else?

Well, I really believe in the mission to build a site that helps people learn anything... and I believed in human-powered search before that (and still do to be honest). I've got the education bug, and I want to take the promise we all see in things like Lynda.com and Kahn Academy and scale it into a brand as big as Google or Wikipedia. LAUNCH, Angel investing and This Week in Startups are all fun, but they are not a…

Jason I think the stats, pre-pivot, pivot, and after pivot bear this out that Wales may be right that a profit site cannot be execute properly..

I even saw the stats pattern when the Quantcast stats were not hidden..and I had to look up how to do stats again just to analyze it..as I had not touched stats math in years..

Re: A Week After Google Changes Algo, Mahalo Fires 10% of Staff

#102

Post by mhp »

sofakeekafos wrote: post #73
moultano wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus guys, take it elsewhere.

He's being lionized on HN for making money, while he's polluting the written heritage of the human race. Not a chance I will take it elsewhere. He needs to be called out, to his face, as does anybody who thinks he deserves HN's respect.

How is posting on an anonymous internet forum with an account you just created hours ago telling him 'to his face'?

Re: A Week After Google Changes Algo, Mahalo Fires 10% of Staff

#103

Post by alexfarran »

JonnieCache wrote: post #92
rimantas wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Video is the future, and we're going to be the largest > creator of educational videos this year. Oh no. I cannot wait for the video be the past. It may be the best way to teach some things (mainly involving physical activities or physical manipulation of some sort), but for programming topics it most often just waste of time and bandwidth. Why would I want to spend a minute watching someone to type a line of code…

>Why would I want to spend a minute watching someone to type a line of code with all mistypes and corrections, when I can glance it in a second? A lot of people do want this. A good screencast shows not only the code, but the thought process that goes into writing the code. People have different cognitive styles and learn in very different ways. I thought this was common knowledge by now.

It's common knowledge, but its essentially a myth.

http://www.changemag.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/September-Oc...

Re: A Week After Google Changes Algo, Mahalo Fires 10% of Staff

#104

Post by trotsky »

rimantas wrote: post #72
jasonmcalacanis wrote: post #41

1. We're working with the folks impacted to place them at whatever company they would like to join. I'm personally reaching out to folks who might want these fine people. They will all wind up on their feet and be great additions to the vibrant startup scene in Los Angeles. 2. Mahalo is doing amazing videos with experts, but our (text) articles were created by passionate writers who are not necessarily experts. Googl…

> Video is the future, and we're going to be the largest > creator of educational videos this year. Oh no. I cannot wait for the video be the past. It may be the best way to teach some things (mainly involving physical activities or physical manipulation of some sort), but for programming topics it most often just waste of time and bandwidth. Why would I want to spend a minute watching someone to type a line of code…

Every time I'm searching for an answer to something and I hit a video without a transcript, I bounce.

Re: A Week After Google Changes Algo, Mahalo Fires 10% of Staff

#105

Post by matthewlyle »

js4all wrote: post #56

After weeks of criticism on Google's results being spam'ed, it was clear that Google would react on this. The algorithm change was foreseeable. On the other side this shows the monopolistic power of Google and how they can hurt individual companies like they want. For us as search engine users, it is time to support other search engines, for instance DuckDuckGo.

If we were to all support another search engine instead, then they'd have the same power. And I'd hope they would do the same thing Google is doing right now.

Re: A Week After Google Changes Algo, Mahalo Fires 10% of Staff

#106

Post by silverbax88 »

jasonmcalacanis wrote: post #60
staunch wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You like brutal honesty and you put yourself out there, so I think it's fair to ask you. Why don't you leave your role at Mahalo and do what you're the absolute best at? (TWiST, LAUNCH Conf, TC competitor)? Plenty of people can do a video eHow, but almost no one else could rival TC. It seems like a pride/ego/money thing from the outside. Is it something else?

Well, I really believe in the mission to build a site that helps people learn anything... and I believed in human-powered search before that (and still do to be honest). I've got the education bug, and I want to take the promise we all see in things like Lynda.com and Kahn Academy and scale it into a brand as big as Google or Wikipedia. LAUNCH, Angel investing and This Week in Startups are all fun, but they are not a…

Point taken about it being the most successful, but is it profitable? It would seem like the conferences could be bigger and more profitable immediately if you focused entirely on that and expanded on it.

Plus, you've already carved out a massive amount of market share and goodwill with the conferences related products.

Re: A Week After Google Changes Algo, Mahalo Fires 10% of Staff

#107

Post by JonnieCache »

alexfarran wrote: post #103
JonnieCache wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why would I want to spend a minute watching someone to type a line of code with all mistypes and corrections, when I can glance it in a second? A lot of people do want this. A good screencast shows not only the code, but the thought process that goes into writing the code. People have different cognitive styles and learn in very different ways. I thought this was common knowledge by now.

It's common knowledge, but its essentially a myth. http://www.changemag.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/September-Oc...

While the specific claims made by this article are true, they do not change the fact that most educated, especially self educated people have experienced situations where they have repeatedly gained much more knowledge much faster from one particular type of learning experience than they have from others, and that there is widely differing opinion on which type is best.

Now, while this obviously does not vindicate the claims of the people who assert that learning styles must be embodied in the neurology of the learner, it does show that something is going on, and it would be to the benefit of both learners and teachers to find out more about it.

Re: A Week After Google Changes Algo, Mahalo Fires 10% of Staff

#108

Post by mvandemar »

ZachPruckowski wrote: post #17
S_A_P wrote: post #13

Could someone tell me more about this Jason Calacanis fellow. He seems to be a very polarizing figure on this site. Really all I know is that he seemed to have a falling out with Michael Arrington and alot of articles seem to mention him in a slightly negative light. Is there some reason for this, and no I'm not trying to troll.

He was an early Web 1.0 entrepreneur who founded Silicon Alley Reporter (which failed) and Weblogs, Inc (which got bought out by AOL). He's sort of a "startup celebrity" in the sense that he's (a) opinionated and (b) good at getting those opinions into people's faces. He's involved in a wide range of stuff in the startup-support ecosystem, and he's also the founder of Mahalo. He describes Mahalo as "people-powered se…

Not sure where you get the "one step removed" bit. It is a content farm, at least in the places where it isn't simply copies of Wikipedia or autogenerated text.

Re: A Week After Google Changes Algo, Mahalo Fires 10% of Staff

#109

Post by shareme »

thasmin wrote: post #26

Maybe this was the excuse for Mahalo to fire the 10% of its workers that were the least productive. The bottom 10% may have even been hurting the company.

JC never has bought into the Welch fire 10% least productive plan..otherwise it would happen every year..[sarcasm] wait that in fact has happen thus far!

Re: A Week After Google Changes Algo, Mahalo Fires 10% of Staff

#110

Post by uptown »

trotsky wrote: post #104
rimantas wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Video is the future, and we're going to be the largest > creator of educational videos this year. Oh no. I cannot wait for the video be the past. It may be the best way to teach some things (mainly involving physical activities or physical manipulation of some sort), but for programming topics it most often just waste of time and bandwidth. Why would I want to spend a minute watching someone to type a line of code…

Every time I'm searching for an answer to something and I hit a video without a transcript, I bounce.

SpeakerText seems to be a solution to address that problem. I know Matt is a user here. I'm sure he can speak to how it could solve that problem better than I can.

http://www.speakertext.com/

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