Jason Calacanis Declares Bankruptcy
Jason Calacanis declared on his blog “Facebook bankruptcy“. Overall his post is a rant about how he is too popular and all the requests he gets is keeping him from actually doing things. Jason also decided to turn off comments on his blog.
You know as I was reading his post, I was thinking of those movie and rock stars who for years wish and work their tails off to make it big. All they want is the fame and the fortune and then one day they actually attain their goal only to complain about how they have no time for themselves and how hard it is to be famous. Boo hoo. Isn’t life cruel.
Come on Jason, please. Is there someone at your place holding a gun to your head making you accept friends requests, forcing you to send emails? I don’t really care about the Facebook thing, if Facebook is not your bag than delete your profile and move on already. What I do take issue with is you shutting off comments to your blog. You should know better than most of us that blogging is about community. It is about giving the opportunity for anyone no matter who they are to let their voice be heard. By you shutting off your comments, you are shutting the door on the community that you have worked damn hard to create these many years.
“If you do have a blog and don’t want to take the time to fire off a blog post in response to this then, frankly, how valuable is your comment? The benchmark for responding to my blog is now starting your own blog and writing a post.”
Ah, I see, so now unless you have a blog, an individuals thoughts, opinions and comments are not valuable? Coming from a true innovator like you Jason, this kind of statement is embarrassing to say the least. I agree with you Jason on one point, you are bankrupt, morally bankrupt. So enjoy yourself in that ivory tower you constructed my friend. We shall see what happens in the future when all those requests and comments stop coming, you think your attitude might change then?
Technorati Tags: Jason Calacanis, Facebook bankruptcy, Facebook, community
Hi there:
Entertaining post. Interesting, the range of comments that Jason’s pronouncement inspired.
anne
Cord, you played right into his little trap and linked to him. This guy is a perpetual whiner, its no wonder so many people dislike him. He fell as backwards into millions and now just wants the attention. Its rather annoying.
Ev – I absolutely agree with you and I knew I already lost when I linked to him, but after reading his post, I had to respond.
Anne, I agree his post has caused a myriad of thoughts and comments. What did you think of his post?
Jason is brilliant at one thing – being noticed. Everything he does is calculated to make people do exactly what you’ve done – write about him.
Pete – I know and I would not be surprised if this whole thing was just some big link baiting exercise, but as I said before, I felt compelled to write something. Thanks for your comments.
Calacanis does indeed garnish attention from the blogosphere like a huge magnet. And while he is brilliant, Mahalo is not much more than about.com at this point. The solution on Facebook would be to only accept real friends. I’m not sure sites like Facebook even have relevance in the business world- despite what Tim Ferriss and others would have you believe- it is almost as if you need two twitters, two facebooks, etc- one for friends and one for business.
Hi Cord:
My two cents: Social networking as a phenomenon is maturing. It has real benefits, but it also attracted a lot of attention simply because it was new and different and what the cool kids were doing. At the end of the day, people are trying to simplify their lives so increasingly the trend will be to judge the value of social networking based on quality rather than quantity. Jason’s comments are representative of that trend.
Anne, I absolutely agree with you. Though as I said in my post, my issue was why did he have to stop accepting comments? Was he actually tired of dealing with his community or is this just one big link baiting exercise?
I dunno about the link baiting, Cord. In terms of comments, I can imagine that time spent on administration could outweigh the value, particularly if many of them are problematic as he states. The blogging community tends to err on the side on inclusiveness, even when some commenters are nasty, add little value, etc. So when comments are cut off, many in the community feel affronted because it hasn’t been the culture til now, and because the prevailing view is that there are other mechanisms to deal with the problem. Obviously I can’t speak for Jason but his pronouncement is illustrative of what I think is inevitable as social networks evolve – weighing the value of these relationshps verus the time spent managing them and pulling back to more ‘intimate’ communities where the value of the dialogue is increased.
I should have said “where the value of the dialogue is perceived to be increased.”