jason calacanis

10Sep08

Jason Calacanis

People hate on Jason Calacanis a lot.

My view is… I really like him (although never met him personally). He is successful (Silicon Ally, Weblogs Inc, Mahalo), probably has a net worth around 30-50M, speaks his mind, and 99% of people are just pure jealous.

He truely is the king of internet spin and has been able to build a brand over a number of years through hard work. I find it interesting that he has just quit blogging, and has started a limited (750 people) email list. He has done this because blogging has become so saturated and the crowd has turned on him. He will get a clearer message through his emails.

What’s interesting to me is that at the same time as he is quitting blogging I am starting to test it out again. I agree with him that it is saturated and very hard to be heard and noticed, however what I like about blogging is that your views and thoughts are recorded and can be found through the Search Engines and re-read. A few people will likely subscribe to this blog feed.. however how many of them are really going to check it regularly… probably as little as 1% ?

In regards to an email list… great idea, love it… in fact I started one about 12 months ago myself. I should get it fired up again too and do it quarterly. The thing about email is that it is more personal, and it is far more direct.. straight into people’s inbox! Just be sure to have very easy unsubscribe functionality.

Anyway – follow him on twitter.

Note: Was surprised to find that he has shut down his blog (“server not found” error messages). I know he said he was quitting, but I thought he would still leave up his old content. Oh well, well done on him. On to new and better things.


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  1. 1 Justin Davies on February 6, 2009 said:

    Clay, great post. In my view Jason is doing what people who are great individual brands do – direct attention to themselves. So, when blogging was new, he was the pioneer. Now blogging is becoming mainstream he is pulling away from it – shock and awe “What is he doing?”. He has also drawn a huge fan club on Twitter with over 56,000 followers – so he is microblogging like crazy and that is where he is getting plenty of attention.

    I was fortunate enough to be chairing a panel at Cebit Sydney for Transaction 2.0 last year that he spoke at, and also a startups panel where he was one of the judges. He is an energetic and controversial speaker, and pragmatic business person – but there is no doubt that he wants to create value quickly. His personal brand is part of the value.

    As to blogging, it is now harder to be different. But isn’t that the essence of entrepreneurship – finding a gap and filling it. It is sheer hard work to create and maintain a great blog… and those that wont put in the yards will fall away. However there is no question that media consumption is changing significantly and people are turning to their specific interests on the web.

    Looking forward to more on the topic….

    Reply

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