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15.8.08

Mahalo Fail Whale - Prevalent Flaws 

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."

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