Sherlock, get out your magnifying glass. Clues have been scattered everywhere and there is a mystery to be solved. This is no Whodunnit; Jason Calacanis, founder of Weblogs, Inc., is clearly the mastermind. While there are no bodies on the ground yet, Calacanis has marked July 14, 2007 as the day that SEOs will supposedly litter the streets. Francophiles will recognize the symbolic date as Bastille day. Could it be that Calacanis envisions himself as a modern day rebel, about to storm the prison?
Perhaps. His plan is to render SEOs irrelevant through a human-powered search engine, much along the lines of Wikipedia. For novice detectives gathering facts, Searcharazzi suggests reading Dr. Watson’s post.
Adding to the intrigue is the fact that Calacanis is taking month off of blogging. While this could mean that the trail goes cold, he has suggested that the curious check out his Twitter page. Searcharazzi has also learned that our clever subject has left clues in other parts of the web. For example, the Wikipedia user page for JasonCalacanis is a hot new trail to follow:
My List of Wikipedian Questions• What motivates the top 1% of wikipedians?
• What do the top 1% do for a living? Are they tech folks? Media folks? Do they have full-time jobs?
• How many hours a day/week do the top 1% spend on the site?
• Are there any stories of top wikipedians using their wiki-cred to land jobs/start companies?
• Who is the fastest wikipedian?
A tipster suggests that Calacanis is trolling for top wikipedians to join his gang, much as he encouraged the best Diggers to join him as he built Netscape. Afterall, if there is one site that currently outranks any SEO work, it would be Wikipedia. Mua-ha-ha-ha!
Let the sleuthing begin! Comments are open for thoughts on the above as well as any additional leads.
Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.
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i thought i just read 2 minutes ago that we shouldn’t give jason publicity about this new site because he’s a huge penis. what gives?
After the initial post, this new tip came in — and it seemed worth mentioning since we’re doing a purge all on the same day :)
Plus, I’m not saying don’t pay attention to Jason. I’m saying don’t take the SEO-is-dead bait, if that’s used as a pitch for getting people talking about his new project.
Instead, if he’s got a new search project, look at that independently of the let’s poke at SEO angle.