the IT blog

Mahalo, Jason McCabe Calacanis's latest venture, is heading for the deathpool as it seems. While Jason tries to get some PR through his paid-slot-on-twitter-suggestion meme his front row is leaving the company one after another. After recent examples of key Mahalo employees leaving now his product director Eric Stephens is leaving just shortly after his Mahalo Daily anchor Leah D'Emilio quit because Jason needs to turn the daily show into a weekly one. According to Jason it's because the show ain't making any money. So he failed with the show which was supposed to help people, give advice, and present fun activities going along with Mahalo's tagline: We're here to help. Not anymore. From now on it'll be a compilation of youtube clips. We'll see how long Lon Harris will stick with it. Will he be the next to turn his back on Jason?
Meanwhile vanity prevails on Jason's side: He wants to join the Gumball 3000. Still, we are looking forward to his new show "This week in startups". It's been a while since he failed to fulfill his initial commitment for his first series of podcasts.

Labels: Eric Stephens, Jason Calacanis, Leah D'Emilio, Lon Harris, Mahalo, Mahalo Daily

Let there be a Fail Whale for funwebreneur Jason Calacanis's Mahalo, too. We've pointed out several flaws in the Mahalo system, and due to ever prevalent system immanent flaws there is always more: update fail - even acknowledged by Mahalo employees.

Random examples we've come across recently: In the course of the 2008 Beijing Olympics Mahalo claims to have up-to-date coverage, yet they fail to keep pages like the medal count updated as one user pointed out. This was only resolved after baffled Calacanis himself forwarded the request to his team. Apparently, according to the tweet, Lon Harris seems responsible for this task, but he is obviously having more fun doing the Mahalo Daily show.
The Olympic Gymnastics team event is over, but no news on how the US team is faring on its very own Mahalo page. (screenshot) The news on the page date June, mid July, no event news so far. There's many more Mahalo Olympic fail.

Just the other day we were looking up London related pages on Mahalo and noticed they still have the old Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, named on them. The new one was elected back in May. So we tweeted. They acted swiftly, but sloppy: removing any reference to any London mayor from the fast facts on the London page. (screenshot) Usually they have info on a city's mayor, e.g. New York. People will be even more confused, because all other London related pages, like 'London Vacation' (screenshot) still report Linvingstone as mayor of London. Fail.

One more: Public figures, e.g. the Pope: news date back months if not years (screenshot). Are you serious? No important news in recent months about the Pope? What about his Sydney visit, relevant controversy over Latin America?

The verdict: epic fail! Bet Jason didn't mention this scenario in his pitch to Sequoia et al. At least Mahalo employees openly admit to the problem. Former Mahalo geek Sean Percival agreed once: "You know I agree, keeping these pages is going to be more difficult over time."

Labels: Jason Calacanis, Lon Harris, Mahalo, Sean Percival

We have to call out Josh Chandler for being among the worst, a stupid interviewer without any sense of how to formulate proper questions, just jerking along the wave of the technology blogosphere, without the slightest hint that he might have put some sort of effort into investigating and finding out stuff about his guest. This is the Technology Gazette interview with Jason Calacanis.
Entertaining, though, is when Jason rambles on about his contempt for the techmeme crowd, especially Allen Stern from CenterNetworks and that Mathew Ingram: "they are these wacky guys ... they're bitter and angry", "these people are not actually doing stuff", "Allen Stern is basically a nobody", "these guys are famous for writing 'trolly' kind of posts ... and now they're A-list LOL", "they have not done anything incredible in their careers, not somebody you should listen to". And Josh is one of them, too.

update: wack pack member Howard Lindzon loses his cool and calls Jason "asshat"

Labels: Allen Stern, CenterNetworks, Jason Calacanis, Josh Chandler, Mathew Ingram, Techmeme, Technology Gazette

We had them framed mingling once: Julia Allison & Lockhart Steele.
Now they'r at it again:


That's how they prepare for those Curbed house parties: you're [all] invited!

Labels: Curbed, Julia Allison, Lockhart Steele

Today:

The real hero is the person who gives, and then struts and preens in public like they just fucked the prom queen

Labels: charity, fallacy, Krucoff

Fuck you New York! The shitstorm followed, obvs. Usually we'd expect that sort of "honesty" from the Young Manhattanite crew, but the are all tumblrized these days.

[ud]: instead Krucoff wins the culture war - sad.

Labels: Honesty, Jessica Roy, Krucoff, New York, Tumblr, Young Manhattanite

Mass exitus at Mahalo compound. Key members of the Mahalo workforce quit Jason Calacanis's venture: first in line: Calacanis fanboi Sean Percival, and now Nicole Gustas, too. Who's next? Seems like people are using the startup to learn and brush up on their skills to move on. Lunch four days a week seems not enough to accomodate them for longer.

Labels: Jason Calacanis, Mahalo, Nicole Gustas, Sean Percival