Feb 8, 2011 at 6:48pm ET by Danny Sullivan

No stranger to controversy, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis threw down a gauntlet at his "content farm" competitors, arguing they're polluting the web and angering Google, to the detriment of searchers and their own companies. Calacanis made his remarks during an "Ending The Content Arms Race" talk at FM’s Signal LA event. My semi-live blogging of his talk is below. Jason recaps how he started Mahalo in 2007 reaction to what he considered bad search results on Google, results that were filled with spam. He felt human editors could do a better job selecting results for the most popular searc [...]

He Calls Google A Vampire, But Mark Cuban’s Mahalo Is Doing The Sucking

Feb 3, 2010 at 7:19am ET by Danny Sullivan

Yesterday, Mark Cuban warned media owners in a keynote speech that Google is a vampire trying to suck them dry, giving them nothing back and daring owners to block it. This is the same Mark Cuban who is an investor in Mahalo, which touts to advertisers how it taps into Google to generate page views. Is Google a vampire except when it works in Cuban's favor? It's compare and contrast time. Cuban's speech at the OnMedia conference was reported by several publications. I'll quote from AdWeek: "Google is a vampire, and you run scared," he said. "There is no reason to be indexed in Google." An [...]

Mahalo Answers Launches, Offers Cash For Q&A

Dec 15, 2008 at 1:54pm ET by Matt McGee

Mahalo Answers is the newest entry into the crowded Q&A reference site space, but it offers a twist that its biggest competitors don't: the chance to earn money by contributing to the service. Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis says the new service is the third and final piece of his original vision for Mahalo, making it a site that combines search, content, and knowledge exchanges. Yahoo Answers is the 800-lb. gorilla in this field, with some astonishing numbers reported earlier this year: 135 million users and 500 million answers worldwide, and growing at a rate of 11 million new answ [...]

Search 4.0: Social Search Engines & Putting Humans Back In Search

May 28, 2008 at 1:18pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Previously I've covered what I dubbed Search 3.0, how search engines have evolved toward blending vertical or specialized results into "regular" web listings. Today, the step beyond that: Search 4.0, how personal, social and human-edited data can be used to refine search results. The Search Evolution So Far Before going ahead, let me summarize what I covered in my past article, in terms of how search engines have changed over time to create and rank the results you get when doing a search: Search 1.0 (1996): Pages ranked using "on-the-page" criteria Search 2.0 (1998): Pages [...]

SMX Social: Just What Did Calacanis Say About SEO & More Recaps

Apr 25, 2008 at 8:06pm ET by Danny Sullivan

At our SMX Social Media Marketing conference this week, we had a great panel on the future of human powered search. Jason Calacanis of Mahalo, Jimmy Wales of Wikia Search, and Steven Marder of Eurekster all took part. Jason had some remarks on SEO that set off the usual wave of upset. But as I commented to those who weren't at the panel, by the end of Q&A, Jason -- along with Jimmy Wales and Seven Marder -- were agreeing about the usefulness of SEO. It's all down to the definitions. Below you can hear Jason's presentation yourself, then you can hear the Q&A portion that covered search [...]

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