Jason Calacanis: "Blogging Is Dead" & Why "Stupid People Shouldn't Write" | Hacker News Reader

Jason Calacanis: "Blogging Is Dead" & Why "Stupid People Shouldn't Write"

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20 pointstaylorbuley19 comments

Jason Calacanis runs a search spam generator (Mahalo.com) that pushes over-SEO'd content ranging in quality from mediocre to bad. (...something he has denied and outright lied about in public - http://www.seobook.com/black-hat-seo-case-study)

His opinion on web content, and web content quality, carries little to no water with me. This is like Uwe Boll saying that movie making is dead and stupid people should stop making movies.

Come on, let's be serious here for a moment.

http://www.mahalo.com/immanuel-kant/ . Half of the page is full with stupid Google AddWords (no, I don't want to purchase a credit when I'm reading about Kant, you stupid Google). The other half is filled with trivia (I don't care how many miles he walked per day), and the last 5% is passable information probably copied from wikipedia.

The reason I went to that page is that I'm finally trying to read Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason", and me being the stupid that I am of course that I don't understand anything in it. This is why when someone mentioned that they're "experts" and that they know what they're writing I tried to take advantage and become a less stupid person. I failed.

> Half of the page is full with stupid Google AddWords

Not trying to justify Mahalo actions here, but what you just mentioned is a big failure on Google's side. When you add an adsense unit to a web page is with the goal of displaying "contextually related" ads. This is what Google promotes, but it doesn't deliver in most cases.

Or maybe Google is being smart here. Anyone who stoops so low as to use Mahalo as a resource must need a credit card so they can afford to purchase a real reference book on the subject.

This seems to smack of shameless self promotion by Calacanis. He tries to discredit other sources of information and try to promote his website (mahalo.com). But any blog etc.. to get any readership you have to have some kind of draw or gimmick to get readership (or even actual content)

He doesn't seem like a very decent person based on his online conduct. I don't know why people take what he says seriously at all, he got lucky with Weblogs.com and hasn't done much to distinguish himself after that.

'Shameless self-promotion' is both (a) what Mr. Calacanis does and (b) an essential skill for entrepreneurs in general. So I'm actually not willing to ding him for that - he is doing something very normal in two senses.

when "shameless self promotion" leads many smart people to think you're a dick then that's not an essential skill for entrepreneurs.

"Expertise" is relative, of course, depending on how much value someone might extract from it versus the value they might extract from other sources ostensibly covering the same topic. It also depends on context.

And I'd argue that static content by experts isn't going to be sufficient in the world we're headed to. Eventually, nearly all the knowledge in every known domain will be accessible to almost anyone. In such a world, the expert's value is only partially based on the quality or depth of his knowledge; it's rooted more deeply in his ability to synthesize the existing knowledge rapidly and innovatively, or to generate new knowledge. (Having a massive library is almost less important than knowing which shelf holds the book you're looking for at any given time, and in this sense, domain/subject expertise will still be highly valuable). Domain experts won't disappear, because acquiring mastery of a subject involves countless hours of practice or study. But as far as the consumer web is concerned, "expertise" is going to become a fuzzy and highly relative target.

If anything, I think the future of blogging (if not publishing altogether) will shift intellectual capital away from "experts" and toward innovators and creators: people who aren't just treasure troves of knowledge, but who can apply that knowledge in fascinating and creative ways.

Perhaps I'm quibbling over the semantics of the word "expert." But it's a word we should quibble over, because it's been a buzzword for quite some time now, and no two people seem to agree on what it means to them. That, in and of itself, is very interesting.

In such a world, the expert's value is only partially based on the quality or depth of his knowledge

That's not even remotely likely, and I think that's easy to prove. Go to any bookstore and pick up a graduate level text on biology, or maths, or whatever. You have all the knowledge right there in your hands! Now read a page, do you understand it, can you apply it? Probably not. There is a lot more to most fields than just an "API reference".

With all due respect, I think you plucked one of my lines out of a healthy bit of surrounding context -- much of which is in total agreement with you here. I never said that domain expertise was going to be replaced or made obsolete simply by having the raw information available to anyone.

I think he's just running with a very narrow definition of 'blogging'.

Blogging is WordPress, Blogspot, Tumblr, LiveJournal, Twitter, Facebook and any other number of mediums that lists posts of any length in reevrse chronological order, be it for profit, fun, to educate or raise awareness.

Just because it's not all techies cranking out 10 paragraph quality posts anymore doesn't mean it's dead. It's evolved.

"There needs to be a better system for tuning down the stupid people and tuning up the smart people."

It's amusing that he used this image while criticizing other people's writing and intelligence. Does he mean that stupid people are sharp and smart people are flat? Or does he mean that smart people need some adjustments before they can perform at their best? I know what he was searching for, but if you're going to be a snob about writing, you'd better come prepared to express yourself gracefully.

Jason's point is valid no matter your opinion of Mahalo. Reputation may soon be the most important determinant of the value of content, as opposed to social indicators and in tandem with interest- or location-based relevance. We already do this manually today. When I access Google News, I choose specific news sources over others based on my understanding of their reputation for accuracy and thoroughness.

Writing is a useful skill.. Stupid people who write may become less stupid., although having read the comments on such sites as Huffington post, I dont hold a great deal of hope. But I say let them write. However, I would like to see an IQ setting on my browser, so I could filter out any post with an apparent IQ of less than, say, 130.

So only "elite" people should write then? Sometimes I wonder if there's something truly wrong with Calcanis.

Any headline including "X is dead" is even more likely to be wrong than one ending with an exclamation mark.

typical link bait...bait the bloggers, so they write a scathing response...in the process linking to Calcanis and Mahalo.

Calacanis is a stupid person, so he shouldn't write.

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