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Andrew Baron has a hate-on for Mahalo
I have to say I’m not a huge fan of Mahalo.com, the “people-powered” search engine from Jason Calacanis, but then I’m not really the target market (as Jason has pointed out in comments here before). And I can see how it might be useful to some people, if they’re looking for just one or two results. But as skeptical as I am, I look like Jason’s biggest supporter compared to Andrew Baron of Rocketboom, who wrote a recent post entitled “Why Mahalo is Fundamentally Flawed.”
I’m not sure what happened between Jason and Andrew, although I know that Jason offered Amanda Congdon a job after her acrimonious departure as the host of Rocketboom, and he also made some fun of Rockeboom (in what I thought was a kind-hearted way) in a recent Mahalo video. But still — Andrew doesn’t just criticize Mahalo for a few flaws in his post. He effectively accuses Jason of perpetrating a gigantic con, in which he pretends to set up a site to help people find search results, but in reality just wants to get them to click on his ads.
It’s interesting to read the comments on Andrew’s post as well: Jason shows up and gamely tries to respond to the criticisms, and also disproves Andrew’s claim that there are no positive reviews of Mahalo other than Jason’s (which Andrew wriggles out of by saying they aren’t credible). Then, after a comment from Duncan Riley of TechCrunch, the Rocketboom founder wonders whether Duncan’s comment came after a “nudge for a voucher,” whatever that means. It’s bizarre.
Just for the record, I have nothing against Andrew — he was a panelist at the original mesh conference last year, and we were happy to have him — and I think he was a pioneer with Rocketboom. But his vendetta against Jason seems more than a little over the top.
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Let's give users and Mahalo some credit here. "Fool me once, shame on you...".
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Its only purpose is to make money for Jason.
And now, the reason why Im interested, is simply because he is using videoblogging as a marketing tool.
Its very interesting to me personally to see a videoblog that is created to be an advertisement.
Thus, #1, the videoblog will likely be informed by marketing decisions and #2, it may be difficult because the kinds of people who watch videoblogging right now, tend to be the kind of audience that would now show interest in about.com-like sites.
Business-wise, if the video is designed as an ad to drive traffic to Mahalo, Mahalo may spend more bandwidth and production costs on the video then they will make from a click through. They may need to put ads on the vido ads.
Cheers, Drew
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I just thought it was odd that you were so worked up about Mahalo, because you seemed like such a nice guy when we met. But then Jason does seem to have that effect on people :-)
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