Collaborative Book Idea Gets a Nasty Review

Posted Nov 18, 2003, 8:03 PM ET by Jason Calacanis

 I kind of liked Tony’s idea of writing a book on Google collaboratively. However, the NYT took a negative slant on this with the headline “Collaborative Book Idea Gets a Nasty Review” and a photo of Tony looking really sly—perhaps evil.

Amazing how the Grey Lady can spin things. This story is so one-sided I gotta think this is old media beating up new media ideas or simply the continuation of Nick Denton’s crew piling on Tony because he is a commercial blogger (of wait, Nick’s doing porn, the most commecial thing ever!).

Regardless, I salute Tony for pushing the envelope and I don’t hate him because he is super connected, driven and successful—and neither should non-commercial bloggers. He’s contributed a lot to the tech media space and one of the reasons bloggers and indie media is doing so well is because of the projects he’s worked on.

Something about the proposition struck Brian Dear, a software entrepreneur and writer, as being a lot like Tom Sawyer’s inviting the other boys to paint the fence. Mr. Dear found the posting especially galling, he said, because he has been grinding away for years on a history of the user community that grew up around Plato, an early computer network. “It just kind of rubbed me the wrong way,” he said of the Perkins proposal, “and I thought, ‘You know, I should denounce this.’ ”

So on his own Web log, brianstorms.com, Mr. Dear ridiculed Mr. Perkins’s e-mail message line by line.

Mr. Perkins had written: “Writing a book is a very painful experience. And frankly, the only way I can pull this off under a tight deadline (I want it out before Google goes public), is to write it with AlwaysOn members.”

Mr. Dear replied: “Writing a book is so painful, I find it easier if someone else does all the hard work. So I’m asking you, members of the AlwaysOn network, to give me all of your ideas.”

Mr. Perkins wrote: “As we say in the world of journalism, ‘This is a story that needs to be told.’ ’’

Mr. Dear responded: “As we say in Silicon Valley, ‘There’s never enough money. Make more.’ ”

The blast has been widely circulated online. Mr. Perkins, for his part, said, “I thought it was pretty clever, and have referred it to many people, including my wife, for laughs.”

But his online readers have generally been supportive, he said. “I can’t imagine not blogging all my books into existence.”

This just in: The Paris Hilton and Britney Spears Porn Tape!

Posted Nov 18, 2003, 3:54 PM ET by Jason Calacanis

Let's go to the videotape! Call me a cynic, but at this point it has become clear that releasing “home movies” are part of an overall marketing strategy by the media. As such, look for the following in the near future:

Creation and leaking of “home movies” as part of a recording or TV contract: “Before the delivery of a fifth CD, and immediately before the release a ‘best of‘ compilation, the artist agrees to create and release an private adult video. Such creation will remain the property of the artist, but will be available for reasonable publicity purposes by the corporation.”)
Three of the following in a home movie: Paris Hilton, Madonna, Britney Spears, Snoop Dog and William Shatner.
Celebrity Porn Uncensored #12 on E!
Former child-celebrity “home videos” from: Screech, Gary Coleman, Shannon Doherty and Elizabeth Berkeley (or just about any other cast member of Saved by the Bell, 90210 or [insert late 80s sitcom here]).

Go see The Station Agent—right now!

Posted Nov 13, 2003, 11:06 PM ET by Jason Calacanis

Once again I’m chillin n’ bloggin’ at the Mac store. This time I’m at the one in Santa Monica using a G4 with one of the huge studio monitors. Macs are really starting to feel much more stable from the days when I was trying to convert from Windoze. The new X operating system, with that cool navigation bar at the bottom, has breathed new life into the platform.

Just got back from seeing the movie The Station Agent, which I was unable to get into at Sundance. It wound up winning a bunch of awards, and rightfully so—it’s amazing. Go see it with someone you love. It’s great.

Also, make sure you see Capturing the Friedmans, also award-winning from Sundance. Sort of a downer, but a very compelling search for the truth.

Tony Perkins is feeling pretty good about himself…

Posted Nov 4, 2003, 11:41 AM ET by Jason Calacanis

Right about now TP is feeling pretty good about himself, the Valley and the IPO market next year.

He’s got good reason to smile, the San Fran/SV scene is starting to pick up again thanks, in large part, to the Google IPO. Of course, if the Google IPO doesn’t happen or their stock tanks it will be a cold and bitter day in San Fran (well, a colder and more bitter day then normal).

I have to say that on my trip to San Fran last week I found the place buzzing more then it has in the last three years—combined!

While the streets were still empty (picture the Flatiron district with little to no foot traffic… strange right? That is what much of San Fran is still like to this day!), an inner circle of people are doing deals and banging on their Crackberries.

People have learned some major lessons from Google, and they are the antithesis of the dot com days that Tony and I both chronicled in Red Herring and Silicon Alley Reporter (how ironic that we are both doing Web log sites now… or not). Google lessons:

Solve a real problem.
Don’t waste money/be cheap.
Make money, then figure out how to make more money.
Don’t waste money on marketing (when’s the last time you saw a Google commercial or billboard?).
Make your customers love you.
Never stop innovating.
Doing one thing excellent is better then doing eight things good (i.e. Yahoo has dozens of links on their site, but Google main categories are all much, much better: search, image search, discussion groups and news).
Don’t waste money (oh did I mention that already?)

Silicon Valley is back . . . with a Kennedy as First Lady and a global twist.

Life is good again here in Silicon Valley. A lot different, but good. Gone are the dot-bombers who carried big titles, had little experience, and drove up rents in San Francisco. Gone are big expense accounts and the trendy restaurants that helped you use them. No longer is Highway 280 backed up to San Mateo for those driving into Sunnyvale, and you can now drive through downtown Palo Alto in less than 10 minutes.

In order to cleanse our system, though, we did have to pay the price of going out of fashion for a while, which was a painful and embarrassing process. New Yorkers in particular rubbed our noses in it. They stopped writing about us, stopped calling us up and asking us to be on television. They wanted to make it very clear that they really never had anything to do with us in the first place.

But what even the New Yorkers may not know is that Silicon Valley is roaring again. (Based on my recent trip to Paris/London/West Berlin, the Europeans sure are surprised to hear the U.S. is doing better.) As we predicted when we launched AO, Nasdaq is appreciably up on the back of strong economic trends and tech company earnings. And 2004 will be a huge tech IPO year with at least 10 blockbusters currently in the pipeline.

Gawker Gone Wild

Posted Oct 30, 2003, 10:57 PM ET by Jason Calacanis

So, I just got back from an event here in San Francisco hosted by WIRED editor Chris Anderson and had an odd moment when I asked him about his rehab after I read it on a Gawker story about the Napster relaunch party. Here is the note which seems real to me:

Wired editor Chris Anderson is evidently back from Betty Ford, no more trips to the ‘powder’ room for him. Our spy also reports: “Dot-com launch parties are supposed to be sexy. Did we learn nothing in 1999? A tandoori chicken buffet simmering over sterno lamps should not be the hottest thing in the room.”

Turns out Gawker.com was “joking.” Of course, the three people I’ve talked about this also thought they were serious. Anderson wasn’t thrilled when I discussed it with him either. Gawker.com is repenting:

Letter from the Editor: Reading Comprehension #
As Elizabeth Spiers used to always mutter into her Dramamine and tonic when she was the editor of Gawker, explaining a joke immediately renders it not funny. No problem here; most of my jokes aren’t funny to begin with.

In reference to a few very curious emails from people with either bad reading comprehension or no sense of fun, let me state for the record that Chris Anderson, editor of Wired, is not actually a coke addict, as I have repeatedly reported.

Also, Cindy Adams does not eat human babies, no matter what I’ve said. You may in fact find one or two other things I’ve facetiously said on Gawker.

So, Chris Anderson, cokehead? Nah. He’s just your everday magazine editor, with feelings and thoughts and a love of shiny blinking things. In fact, he may have a serious problem with compulsive gadget fondling. I have also heard that he owes 200 grand to a really mean bookie. Oh and he once turned green and all his clothes split off his body and he killed a kitten with his bare hands in front of me. Other than all that stuff, a totally normal kind of dude.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

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Social Networking in San Fran

Posted Oct 30, 2003, 4:44 PM ET by Jason Calacanis

I’m in San Francisco this week for meetings with VentureSource and Wicks (the company that bought VentureReporter.net and which I’m currently working for). I pulled out the old rolodex and pinged some old friends to see what they are up to.

Last night I sat courtside at the Mavericks vs. Warriors game thanks to my good friend David Bunnell. David is the publishing visionary who created PC World and sold it to Ziff, ran Upside in the glory years and recently tried to make the digital gadget space work (with mixed success).

Since my girlfriend couldn’t make the trip I brought Mark Pincus of Tribe.net as my date (http://www.markpincusbio.blogspot.com/). Mark is a brilliant and rabid entrepreneur. He did Freeloader and Support.com previously and I’m sure he’ll hit a massive home run with Tribe.net. He’s got a ton of tricks up his sleeve which I promised not to tell, but I think Friendster and the rest of the social software space is going to get crushed by what he is doing. Mark Cuban even said hello to us before joining his team (he spoke at bunch of our Silicon Alley Reporter events back in the day).

Today I went for breakfast with Craig Newmark of Craigs List fame. Craig is another visionary type guy, but more laid back then Mark who averaged about six calls on his cell phone per hour last night. Craig was the first guy to add the feature “Flag for review” to a website. That created a total revolution in the online space — no longer did you have to police websites, your users did it for you. Total Genius.

Craigslist is making serious bank as well. They seem to have 100-300 of these $75 classifieds on their San Fran site every day (only the San Fran jobs site has a fee, everything else in every city is free). That’s like $15,000 a day, or $75,000 a week or about $3.6m a year in revenue. All from a site built off of free software. I’m sure Google will buy his classified system and make a tab right after news called Classifieds. No doubt in my mind.

Anyway, I’m off to see Rob Burgess over at Macromedia and then shoot over to see Chris Anderson at WIRED. I’ll fill you in/name drop some more later.

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Ugly day for America

Posted Oct 26, 2003, 11:29 AM ET by Jason Calacanis

Watching Meet the Press and the New York Times today I was filled with feeling of complete disgust.

The Times is reporting that President Bush and his team are stonewalling a 9/11 commission, and that the reason is that Bush knew more about the threat about 9/11 in the weeks before those two towers and thousands of lives were lost.

I’m seething from this. Bush is on TV all the time talking about how we have to study this and get to the bottom of that. It is becoming very clear that 9/11 was very avoidable. Bush is clearly scared to death that when the public finds out he knew about those four planes in the days before the actual event, and was unable to stop them, they will want his head on a stick. If this is the case, Bush should just resign. That would be the honorable thing to do.

Then on Meet the Press I’m watching Colin Powell backtracking on his own comments in February of 2001 that Iraq had no WMD. Powell is an excellent liar, but at this point the frustration on his face while he is doing so is clear as day.

As this is all happening while a dozen rockets hit a hotel in Iraq today where Wolfowitz is staying. I thought we were supposed to be looked at as liberators in Iraq?

I’m disgusted.

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Got some French love today: Jason Calacanis, journaliste brillant et businessman de talent. (That sounds good at least!)

Posted Oct 20, 2003, 3:27 PM ET by Jason Calacanis

Anyone speak French?

Blogging since 1750

Le futur roi du BTP (Blog Tout Public), Loïc Le Meur, nous parle de BlogAds. Henry Copeland, l’inventeur du concept BlogAds, fait en effet du bon boulot et son initiative préfigure les évolutions du genre.

(Pour un modèle poussant l’utilisation de la publicité et des services payants dans les blogs, voir Weblogs, inc., le projet de Jason Calacanis, journaliste brillant et businessman de talent. Son weblog personnel présente sa réflexion sur les business models des blogs du futur. Du pur Jason, qui n’a eu de cesse, depuis 1996, de provoquer le microcosme avec ses réflexions provocantes et fut l’un des premiers fossoyeurs du modèle des contenus gratuits. La réalité lui a donné raison sur bien des points, comme en témoigne The End Of Free, animé par Olivier Travers et autres.)

BlogAds n’est pas encore rentable, si j’en crois Henry, qui me confiait avoir lancé ce service pour jeter un pavé dans la mare - la publicité dans les blogs restant un sujet tabou auprès de certains pionniers du genre.
Question publicité il a réussi son coup: tout le monde en parle.
L’un des utilisateurs français les plus en vue est Jean-Luc Raymond, sur mediatTIC.
(Jean-Luc, quel est ton retour d’expérience?)

Henry est aussi l’un des américains les plus européens que je connaisse et un acteur qui compte dans le petit monde de la PQR en France: sa société, PressFlex, est le prestataire de services web de nombreux journaux locaux français, comme La République de Seine-et-Marne, L’Informateur d’Eu ou Le Courrier de Mantes.

Le saviez-vous? Henry a identifié le premier blogueur de l’histoire.
Cela se passait en 1750 :-)

Cheers, Bloguevard

More props on http://SocialSoftware.WeblogsInc.com (or “What’s better, group blogs or the lone blogger and a keyboard?”)

Posted Oct 13, 2003, 7:53 PM ET by Jason Calacanis

Got some props today for the scoops over at http://socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com. Thanks to all the folks linking to and commenting on the Social Software Weblog.

We’ll have two or three bloggers joining us on the blog starting next week. This will mark the first time a Weblogs, Inc. blog becomes a group effort. We’re doing the group blog thing based on the success we see at BoingBoing.net and Many To Many.

Sure, if three people are working on the blog then the $1,000 in advertising (if it hits that) will have to be split three ways. However, we all know that no one is looking to get rich off doing blogs, and having partners on the blog means you don’t have to blog every day if you don’t want to. Takes the pressure off, and makes it better for the readers.

Not sure if the majority of Weblogs, Inc. blogs will have one blogger or groups, but we’ll be trying both and keeping you posted.

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Bloggin’ at the Apple store. (or Why aren’t PCs this pretty?)

Posted Oct 13, 2003, 7:39 PM ET by Jason Calacanis

So, I’m chillin’ at the Apple store at the Grove in sunny LA while my girlfriend gets some shopping done. This place is amazing—like walking into an art gallery.

The total polar opposite of the Microsoft store I visited in the Sony Metreon in San Francisco. That store is so ugly and cold, as opposed to the Apple store.

Apple Store Kids are running around, hipsters are blasting music, and the lighting and glass everywhere makes me feel like I’m on the set of Gattica. On top of all this I’ve been sitting here pounding out emails, creating Weblogs, Inc. sites and reading ESPN Zone for over an hour and they have not bothered me once!

As a matter of fact I feel as productive here, on a Mac in a store, as I do at home. Amazing how technology has changed distance and how we work. I’ve got all my data at my finger tips and the fact that I’m on a Mac not a PC means, well, nothing.

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Review: AMC’s Shootout, with Peter Bart and Peter Guber.

Posted Oct 12, 2003, 4:14 PM ET by Jason Calacanis

Just watched the heavily-promoted AMC talk show Shootout

The show brings together two Peters, Guber and Barts, to discuss the pressing issues in the entertainment industry (I know, that is an invitation for a snide comment, but I’m going to save my snide comments for later in the review)

One of the Peters is soft spoken and smart, and the other one is loud and, well, you get the idea. Peter Bart is, of course, the editor of Variety. Peter Guber is, of course, the infamous producer who caused Sony to lose hundreds of million dollars paying off his employment contract with Warner Bros. As thanks, Sony funded his new studio Mandalay (the one with the cool tiger promo at the start of a film).

Guber is a great producer, having done films like Terminator 2, Basic Instinct, Sleepless in Seattle and Philadelphia. I’m sure his domineering skill set serves him well in that capacity. Unfortunately, it backfires in a roundtable talk-show format.

On paper, the show sounds very promising. The show aspires to have drama (“The Fireworks Begin at 11:00AM” is the tag line on the website). The first show featured Ed Norton and a studio exec from Fox. The studio executive wasn’t even put on the website, while Norton had an extensive bio. This leads me to believe that the Fox exec was added at the last minute

The selection of topics was way too simplistic for the intended audience (i.e. industry folk, prosumers, etc.). I’ll chalk the topic selection to the fact that this is the first show. However, if the best the show’s producer can come up with is the impact of bigger movie budgets and the proliferation of awards shows, this show will be gone before the ink dries on his first check. I mean, with everything going on in film, there are much more prescient things to talk about. Heck, a loser film student could come up with more interesting topics. I’m sure the topics will evolve (they better).

The show is also completely ruined by the fact that Peter Bart, who has something intelligent to say, was constantly dominated by Peter Guber, who apparently has nothing to say (at least nothing intelligent). There was a 10 minute stretch where Bart basically gave up and let Guber take over. Guber is doing some bad McLaughlin Group impersonation in which he asks a question (i.e. what’s up with all these award shows?) and then lets people start to answer before cutting them off moments later, and giving his grand analysis (i.e. the rules need to be changed). Guber shouldn’t have a talk show. He should be on public access with a fixed camera pointed at his head while he tells you everything he know.

Norton had the best points of the show, and it seemed that Guber didn’t want to alienate him and actual let him speak without interrupting! Norton made the Fox executive concede that mid-market films were much more profitable then big budget films. He also got the group to discuss the cynicism of the film-going audience, as manifested in their belief that award shows are bought. Of course, this was short lived, as the discussion quickly moved to how much money Variety makes off Oscar ads.

Bart’s quip back, a deadpan that Variety was a non-profit, was one of the better moments of the show.

The show ended with a boring point-counter point format moderated by a blond-bombshell type with horrible delivery. The two Peters touched on topics like the relationship between Arnold and Hollywood, as well as the $7 million paid for the movie rights to the best selling book The DaVinci Code. As a total aside, this could have been a great main topic for the show (i.e. the role of writers and the script, or the lack thereof, in Hollywood).

Overall grade: C

Free advice:

Mr. Guber: It is perfectly fine to cut people off in a group discussion format. However, it is standard operating procedure that if you do cut in, you should have a comment that is of at least equal value, if not more value, then the one you’ve just ended!
Peter Bart: Please get a little bit more aggressive before Guber has this promising show canceled.
Show Producer: Please take the topics up a couple of levels, and don’t be afraid to go a little more in-depth. Anyone who is going to spend part of Sunday morning with you guys is in the business, or aspires to be, and doesn’t want to have to wade through simplistic discussion for a few insightful crumbs. Give us the chunky, deep and gooey stuff.

The show will be repeated on: Mon., Oct. 13 at 1:35 AM / EST; Wed., Oct. 15 at 11:25 AM / EST; and Fri., Oct. 17 at 3:05 PM / EST.

Related Links
» AMC's Shootout AMC Channel
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Weblogs, Inc. week one: Two more weblogs down, 96 to go.

Posted Oct 10, 2003, 4:34 PM ET by Jason Calacanis

Today is the end of the first official week of Weblogs, Inc., the company I founded with my life-long friend Brian Alvey recently.

Brian runs the company, I’m the hands-off chairman. Really. However, I thought I’d give you a little update from my perspective on how the project/experiment is going.

For background, Brian and I have known each other since high-school and we’ve spent more time working together then with anyone else in our lives (Silicon Alley Reporter magazine, CyberSurfer magazine, VentureReporter.net, etc). Not sure I want to expand on this any more, but let’s just say Brian and I finish each other’s sentences and other cute things like that. OK, too much information.

This week we launched two new blogs. If you combine that with my personal blog (you’re soaking in it right now) and the Weblogs, Inc. corporate blog, we’re up to four blogs.

For some insane reason I told Wired I didn’t think having 100 blogs in a year would be too difficult. We’re now 4% of the way there, and we’re going to try to keep up with that prediction.

So, the two new kids in the family are:

http://socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com

A soon to be “group” weblog focused on social software. Social Software is a big word for software that lets you communicate and basically means sophisticated stuff like Friendster, Groove Networks, Tribe.net, etc. People used to call it collaborative software, but that is so 1996. This site is focused on the *business* of social software, so you won’t find a lot of academic stuff on it.

and

http://telemedicine.weblogsinc.com

This site is dedicated to distance medicine and education. This space is booming and the ramifications of having the top medical knowledge, practices and talent available to anyone with an Internet connection is mind blowing. Of course, if you’re from a major city like New York this is hard to get your head around. Think about if you lived a couple of hours, or days, from a basic hospital. Well, a lot of the world does, and telemedicine will be the way they will get their healthcare. What I love about this space is that it is here today, unlike things like digital patient records and other healthcare related technologies.

Also, in week one we changed our revenue split to be more blogger friendly. Our goal is to make money for bloggers. If we can’t make bloggers money there is no way for us to build our brand. More details at the corporate blog.

Have a great weekend.

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Kicker shows some love today…

Posted Oct 9, 2003, 4:35 PM ET by Jason Calacanis

ItGirl Elizabeth Spiers shows some love for Fred Wilson and I today…

New York Venture Capital Flatiron Partners’ Fred Wilson recently started a blog, as did Silicon Alley Reporter founder Jason Calacanis. (I feel so 1999!) Wilson says he’s in the process of raising another fund and that he feels optimistic about the technology sector in New York. “I think that we are seeing a resurgence of entrepreneurial activity around the Internet and Technology,” he writes. “I see it in NYC, I see it in Silicon Valley, and I see it everywhere else.” I guess that comes as no suprise. I’ve never met a venture capitalist who wasn’t optimistic, even if it’s?to use Radar editor Maer Roshan’s favorite phrase?cautiously optimistic.

Related Links
» New York Venture Capital by The Kicker The Kicker (aka Gawker.com 2.0)
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Busted up bad (or White men can jump, and they can almost break three fingers if they’re not careful.)

Posted Oct 9, 2003, 3:13 PM ET by Jason Calacanis

Some wild man decided to fall on me playing basketball the other night, and three of my fingers on my right hand got bent so far back that they almost snapped. Scary.

Expect a slow down in overall blogging for the next couple of days while the swelling goes down. ESPN SportsZone should have the highlights, as well as my 360 windmill dunk, tonight at 10.

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Radio+blog=very cool site (or The evolution of Pseudo.com)

Posted Oct 8, 2003, 2:45 PM ET by Jason Calacanis

Stumbled across a very cool site while listening to the cybercast (did I just use the word cyber?) of BloggerCon.

Christopher Lydon’s BlogRadio.com is an amazing combination of blogs and radio interviews. Listening to the Jeff Jarvis interview right now while I’m working on some new VentureReporter.net research reports. Plus he knows what questions to ask and not to interrupt the person being interviewed.

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» Blog Radio Blog Radio
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Where’s the RSS?

Posted Oct 8, 2003, 1:42 PM ET by Weblogs, Inc. Staff

Quick note: We will have RSS up in the next couple of weeks.

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Nick Denton’s blogging about me again. (or “Why I don’t own the New York Knicks right now?”)

Posted Oct 8, 2003, 12:18 AM ET by Jason Calacanis

Nick Denton is clearly thinking about Weblogs, Inc. a lot these days, four of his last 12 weblog entries are, blush, about us!

However, his facts are wrong again. This time he is claiming that someone offered me $100 million for Silicon Alley Reporter—and I turned it down! Now, people did offer tens of millions for SAR, but it was not $100 million.

If someone had offered me $100 million for Silicon Alley Reporter, I would own half the New York Knicks right now, and Mark Cuban and I would be surfing in Hawaii during training camp.

OK, now that I’ve set the record straight, let’s talk turkey.

Nick says my math about some B2B weblogs being worth a million or two in a couple of years is wrong. He says my expectations on valuations of weblogs are off. Well, a 2-4 times revenue or a 3-5 multiple on earnings is not insane for a media property. As a matter of fact, it is average. Perhaps very good in a down market like the past couple of years, I’ll give you that.

Now, making money is not easy as Nick pointed out on his weblog, he is only making $24,000 a year off of Gizmodo and Gawker.com. Both are B2C properties, which are much harder to monetize.

However a strong B2B weblog with a driven team could easily do $500,000 a year. If that weblog had three people working on it for $50,000 each, as well $50,000 in expenses (i.e. some office space, computers, etc.), they would have $300,000 in profits. This is not some amazing performance, this is good performance. This is also a 60% margin, which many small media properties have.

If you got 3-5x earnings on that $300,000, you could sell for $1 million. This happens every week in the B2B publishing space. Heck, if you made just $200,000 on that $500,000, and you had a motivated buyer who would pay 5x earnings, you could get a million. That would be a home run, but it is very possible even in this market.

A million dollars in valuation is not a lot of money for a profitable B2B publication, and that is clearly what I’m talking about here and with Weblogs, Inc. and other B2B blogs.

Perhaps the mental block people are having with this concept is that they are equating a B2B blog with something like Gawker.com (B2C) or a personal weblog like BuzzMachine.

If you replace the word “weblog” in this discussion with “magazine” or “newsletter” or “email newsletter” or “conference”, all of a sudden this seems perfectly feasible.

Let me give a little insider information. Nick really doesn’t want people to crowd the space and that is why he is knocking me on his blog every other day.

Truth be told, Nick is not in a great position right now. Gawker.com was ripped off by New York Magazine and I’m sure that The New York Observer will be competing with him next. On top of that, Gizmodo will soon face some serious competition.

It is not easy being one of the first people into the space like Nick was, because you get used to not having any competition. Weblogs, Inc. and other business-focused blogs are starting to create an impact. We have a very clear vision of how to scale this business and make serious revenue. Nick admits on his own website that he doesn’t know how to make money from all this and that he is not really trying.

Well, I’m sorry but I’m not content sitting here waiting for a solution to present itself. We are going to make it our mission to make this space profitable, and I think that is the key to all of this: we’re making it into a business and some other people are either not doing that, or perhaps don’t know how.

It may be as simple as Nick hasn’t figured out how to connect the dots yet, and we have. That’s what I think all this is all about.

OK, I’m done now. I’ve got work to do.

We just launched our first B2B weblogs (http://socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com) and we have seven other B2B weblogs we are working on launching this month.

If you’re a blogger out there and you share our vision that B2B blogs and the raw energy of the space can make money, contact us. We’re looking for people who believe.

Knicks, threatening to give hope to fans, might land Mutombo

Posted Oct 7, 2003, 8:02 PM ET by Jason Calacanis

Looks like the Knicks are going to sign 37 year old (yeah right, more like 42) Dikembe Mutombo. Once the best defensive center in the league, now simply the best defensive center in the East (which ain’t saying much).

However, the roster of Dice, Mutombo, Van Horn and Houston could be, well, average at best. Of course, that assumes that Houston and Dice are healthy, we actually get Mutombo and Van Horn has some level of pride in his game. Add to that the long-shot chance that the Knick’s will land Nick Van Exel and you’ve got a very nice starting five. However I doubt two of those five things will happen, so I’m expecting the Knicks to miss the playoffs—again.

The Blogger War Continues (or Can a Blog Be Worth a Couple of Million Dollars?)

Posted Oct 6, 2003, 7:04 PM ET by Jason Calacanis

The supremely snarky MemeFirst.com continues my Blog War theme the other day with an obsessive compulsive breakdown of all things Elizabeth Spiers, the founding editor of Gawker.com (background: Spiers brought the Gawker.com idea over to New York Magazine which has created a photocopy of Gawker.com called The Kicker… I guess a non-compete would have been a good thing, huh Nick?). From the Memefirst post:

Why is it that Elizabeth Spiers is some kind of itch I can’t stop scratching? I think it’s something to do with snark, which is an attitude characterized principally by the assumption of superiority. I’m a huge fan of snark myself, but it’s a dangerous game to play: a failed snark makes the snarker look petty, pathetic, and ripe for being taken down themselves. What’s more, when the snarker is the recipient of acres of fawning press attention, any self-respecting contrarian will automatically tack in the other direction.

Earlier in the week MemeFirst tossed a barb my way that got me thinking, “Can a weblog be worth a couple of million dollars?” Here is what Memefirst wrote.

With the likes of Jason Calacanis rising from the ashes and once again projecting multimillion dollar valuations for companies with almost no revenues, I’m beginnging to get the feeling that we’re witnessing the beginning of another bubble.

Now, a couple of points:

First, weblogs do have revenues and they are starting to become significant in terms of the traffic they are getting. We all know that. Rafat Ali, a one-man shop is making $70,000 a year and Matt Drudge makes over a million dollars a year. Even Nick Denton is making almost $25,000 a year! Weblogs can make money, and they can be profitable. And, Matt Drudge is a weblog despite the fact that he doesn’t like to be called that.

Second, if a weblog were to make $250K to a million in revenue, which I think they can, then that weblog could be worth 2-4x the revenue or 3-5x the earnings. So, if you do the math we’re looking at $500,000 to $2-3 million for the top blogs out there. Granted this is three years off and granted 99.99999% of blogs will never be sold, but some will be sold and will make the owners a nice little profit.

Am I hyping by thinking that there is a couple of million dollars out there to be made by blogs? I don’t think so, but what do I know, I just took Silicon Alley Reporter from a 16-page photocopy to $12 million in revenue a year in four years.

Finally, how am I rising from the ashes when I never burned? You know that VentureReporter.net (the rebranded Silicon Alley Reporter) never went out of business, made millions of dollars and was sold in April of this year right? Anyway, I’ve always wanted to rise from the ashes, so thanks for writing that. I feel just like Jean Grey!

Memefirst.com has some interesting posts — definately worth loading every other day.

Some notes on this blog…

Posted Oct 6, 2003, 1:07 PM ET by Jason Calacanis

Some notes on this blog:

1. You won’t see too many posts during the day because I have a full-time (and then some) job working at Wicks Business Information, the company that bought VentureReporter.net in April. VentureReporter.net was the rebranded Silicon Alley Reporter. You may see a brief post or two during the day while I’m having lunch or taking a coffee break, but expect the longer ones at night and the weekends.

2. I write about media, finance, technology and some personal topics on this blog. It is not all tech, all finance, etc. So, don’t complain if I talk about the Knicks or movies.

3. Brian Alvey is the CEO of Weblogs, Inc., I’m just the co-founder and chairman. I have not day-to-day involvement except for the fact that I host my personal blog with Weblogs, Inc. So, if you have any questions regarding Weblogs, Inc. please email the Weblogs, Inc. team.

4. I may promote some Wicks or VentureReporter.net products on this blog, but you won’t see me talking about my day job and when comments are available on the site I will not allow discussions of my day job on the site. Why? Like Jeff Jarvis says, because it’s my backyard and I don’t want to subject my co-workers or the company to any discussions. If Wicks or VentureReporter.net wanted to have message board they would put one on their site.

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Three new reports from VentureReporter.net

Posted Oct 6, 2003, 12:04 PM ET by Jason Calacanis

Well, it’s Monday and I’m back to my day job working at Venture Reporter.

We released three great reports this week. The basic concept is that we selected the top 20 venture-backed startups that were most likely to succeed across three industries, and profiled them.

This is always a tricky thing because there is no exact science to knowing why a startup would succeed or fail. However. we did a good job at looking at who the investors were in these companies, how much these companies have raised to date, and who’s behind these efforts. Put that all together and I think we did a really good job at picking some of the potential winners.

My guess is that our of these 60 startups (20 in each of three reports) that 1/3rd will shut down or be sold in fire sales and the 2/3rds will have positive outcomes for their investors. Then again, the wireless, security and biotech spaces are pretty solid these days (well, maybe not the wireless as much as the other two).

If you would like to buy one of these reports and get one free, call my brother Jamie Calacanis the director of sales at VentureReporter.net and tell him I sent you: 646.473.2240.

The Twenty Venture-backed Biotech Firms Most Likely to Succeed Order for only $295 — Report Details

The Twenty Venture-backed Wireless Firms Most Likely to Succeed Order for only $295 — Report Details

The Twenty Venture-backed Security Firms Most Likely to Succeed Order for only $295 — Report Details

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What if DVDs and CDs were $5 - $7? (or ordering Hero from China on EBAY)

Posted Oct 5, 2003, 10:32 PM ET by Jason Calacanis

Speaking of movies…

My friend Michael Backes recommended a Chinese film called Hero on his Friendster page recently. I started looking for it and noticed it was not on Netflix yet, so I checked out Kazaa and it was there. (Did I mention I paid for the new Kazaa? It was worth it just to get rid of all the spyware.)

No big surprise finding it on the P2P-sphere, so I started downloading. However, it’s taking forever because there must only be one or two people out there with this soon-to-be hit from China, not to mention the fact that I’m downloading two 700 MB files on a 160k DSL line. (I can’t get any better to my home yet… ugh.)

I get frustrated from all this and look on EBAY. Sure enough there are a ton of cool DVD versions shipping in from overseas starting at… $3.49!!!

I prefer owning the DVD to having a bad copy on my hard drive anyway, so I ordered a copy. Which got me to thinking, if I had to put the price point at which a film or music CD becomes not worth downloading (in terms of time, the cost of the blank CD, the trouble, not getting the artwork and packaging, etc.), I think that number is right around $5-$6.95.

If I could go to Virgin or Tower Records and buy CDs or DVDs for $5-7, I would buy 20-30 discs a month. Right now, I buy no CDs and I buy maybe one or two DVDs of obscure Kurosawa films I want to own each month. I know it sounds crazy, but I’m pretty sure people would buy 3x as much media product if they got it for 1/3rd the price. Perhaps those price discounts would only be available if you bought like 10 or 20 discs at a time, and those discs would just come in a cheap paper sleeve to save on packaging.

If anyone from the entertainment industry is out there listening, perhaps you could bring the idea up in your next meeting. Long story short… I’m ordering HERO from China and will let you know how it is.

Miramax has bought the film rights and will have it in theaters in 2004.

Does anyone know if ordering DVDs that are legally available in China over EBAY is illegal?

Related Links
» $3.49 EBAY copy of Hero I ordered EBAY
» IMDB listing for Hero IMDB
» Hero news... Rotten Tomatoes
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It’s not easy being a Knick fan…

Posted Oct 4, 2003, 10:59 PM ET by Jason Calacanis

Well, training camp for the NBA has started and my Knicks continue to spiral downhill from the glory days of Oak, Starks, and Patrick and the unexpectedly exciting years of Sprewell, Camby, LJ, and Houston.

In the off-season the Knicks took the one player they had with any heart, Sprewell, and traded him for the softest player in the league, Keith Van Horn. Leaving the Knicks with one of the weakest squads in the league. Infuriating, Spree had his faults but he left it all out on the court at least.

This turn of events is particularly heart breaking because the only Knicks I’ve ever known were the rough and tough, blue collar guys that made it deep into the playoffs every year. When I look back on it I must have given up about 80 nights a year of my life for each of the last ten years on these guys, either at the game or watching it on TV with other die hard Knick fans like Doug Rushkoff, Brunno Maddox, John Brockman, my brothers Jamie and Josh, Brian Alvey, Fred Wilson or Mike Savino. What memories we had huh guys?

It’s amazing how emotional your bond to a sports team can get. When the Knicks would lose in the finals or playoffs, I would be depressed for months. Now that they are one of the worst teams in the league, I have to brace myself every time I leave my house with my Knicks jersey on. People see me and say, “I’m sorry about your Knicks.”

I saw Bill Walton at a Neil Young concert I went to a couple of weeks ago with my friend Bob Daly. I asked Bill how to fix the Knicks. He replied, deadpan, “Leadership at the top.” True that.

The Knicks are so bad that they went though all 10,000 people on the waiting list! Getting Knicks tickets used to be like getting into Bungalow 8 or a table at Nobu on Friday night. Now, they are as easy to get as a cold on the F train.

If only we hadn’t signed Houston to that crazy contract, if only we had gotten Chris Webber, if only we had drafted Ron Artest, if only… if only… ugh.

Related Links
» McDyess Back in Camp, but Playing Has to Wait NY Times
» The Sorry Knicks NY Knicks
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Watching bootleg feed of BloggerCon today…

Posted Oct 4, 2003, 1:58 PM ET by Jason Calacanis

I’m watching the bootleg video stream of BloggerCon today:
http://epeus.blogspot.com

Also, on the IRC chat at the same time… feels just like being there.

Details here: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/bloggerCon/

So far the event seems to be focused on what makes a blog and what makes something not a blog even if it claims to be a blog. Does that make sense?

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Fred Wilson confesses so I might as well put my cards on the table too…

Posted Oct 3, 2003, 1:42 PM ET by Jason Calacanis

Fred Wilson went out on a major limb today confessing his downloading sins. More importantly he explained to the record industry a) how he agrees with them that stealing is wrong, b) that he removed file sharing software when Apple launched their iTunes services, c) gave his kids a monthly allowance to spend on iTunes, and d) he is still frustrated by the fact that some songs are still not online.

I have to say I agree with him that stealing is wrong. If there was a viable offering out there, I would use it. However, I’m just not down with the 99-cents-a-track thing. It creates too many hurdles for me, I like to sample a lot and I don’t want to have to think, “Should I buy this or not?” That is just too much of a mental commitment for me, since I’ve been spoiled by P2P software. I want it all, I want it now and I don’t want to worry about how much I’m spending.

In my world I would pay $50 a month for access to everything out there. $50 a month is $600 a year (or 40 CDs at $15 each). Right now the music industry has not seen one penny from me in five years and I’ve consumed more music in the past five years than in my entire life. I’m a huge music fan today because of the ease at which I can download stuff, try it, share it and delete it. I don’t want to think about should I download this or not…is it worth $0.99?

Please, record industry, take my $50 a month and give me digital access to the entire catalog. I know I’m not alone in this — there have to be millions of people who would pay $50 a month for access to everything you’ve got. If five million people bought this service that would be $3,000,000,000 a year. I think that five million people out of the 270 million in the U.S. would buy this service. That is less then 2% of the country. Three billion dollars in pure profits sitting out there waiting to be taken. Wake up, people!

Related Links
» Fred Wilson & his kids sit down to talk about downloading Fred Wilson's "A VC"
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New York Magazine steals Gawker; This Blogger War Has Begun

Posted Oct 2, 2003, 1:49 PM ET by Jason Calacanis

Today New York Magazine stole the best new media launch of the past two years, Gawker.com. With the release of Gawker 2.0, aka Elizabeth Spiers’ The Kicker, New York Magazine has confirmed the business potential of blogs.

Somewhere Nick Denton is staring into a cup of coffee.

Didn’t you offer her a gig Jason? What happened?

For background, I interviewed Spiers to work at VentureReporter.net as the director of research before she took the Gawker gig with Nick (we chose another candidate who had worked for two of our main competitors, Capital IQ and VentureWire). Ironically, the other person didn’t work out (I’ll leave it at that).

Then I got wind of the ice developing between her and Nick. I’ve been told Nick got tired of hearing everyone say ES was Gawker, I know when I said that to him he recoiled and said something to the effect of “There are many people working on Gawker, not just Elizabeth.”

Regardless of how the breakup went down I thought if Spiers owned her own publication and could still pay the rent, she would be a powerhouse. So, I offered her a basic deal: a modest salary (I was thinking like $40K, enough to cover monthly living expenses, but we never even got to numbers) and 50% ownership in the new brand (i.e., the indie version of The Kicker).

This deal was 1,000 times better then the token Nick was paying her (I don’t know for sure, but I would guess $1K a month with no equity), and a lot less in terms of salary then what New York magazine would pay her, but with a ton of equity. As the investor in this new brand I would risk a little bit of money (~$50K over the first year), and stand to make the money back in a year or two if we could sell more ads then Nick who is doing $2K a month (which doesn’t seem to hard to me). She took the NYM gig because she wanted the big media experience. I can’t blame her, but if she wants to leave NYM in another six months and parlay that cache into her own brand, the offer still stands.

Regardless, this is a defining moment in the history of blogging: the major theft of a concept by a major brand combined with a major win by a blogger. I estimate that Spiers is probably making $60 to $80K, and that fact that her name is all over the blogosphere is another major win.

I’m happy for her.

Will this put Nick and Gawker out of business?

Hell no. This is perhaps one of the best things that could happen to Gawker. Sure a lot of Gawker.com readers will read The Kicker, but they won’t stop reading Gawker. What this hijacking does more than anything is it confirms that Nick’s idea was genius. Now every advertiser that New York Magazine’s sales staff convinces to buy space on The Kicker will get a call from Nick’s teams saying, “Would you like to advertise on the original cutting-edge blog that inspired the Kicker and that has more street cred?” At least that is what I would do — and in fact that is what I did when the New York Times started cribbing stories from Silicon Alley Reporter without giving credit.

Another positive for Nick is that every writer who comes to Gawker can be told by Nick “Gawker.com is a springboard for your career: Work hard here for next to nothing and you can land a major gig like Spiers did a year from now.” That is what I told people at Silicon Alley Reporter who frequently made $30 to $45K working for us and a year later got $50 to $60K working for the Inside.com’s of the world.

So, the question now becomes, “How long before PAPER magazine offers Choire Sicha a full-time gig to do the PAPER magazine version of The Kicker?” I mean, Gawker 3.0. I mean…you know what I mean.