Vallewag: What would you think of Jon Miller going to Yahoo?

Calacanis:

Jon Miller would be amazing for Yahoo because he is extremely good at building display advertising businesses and buying young startups. Remember, when they let him go he was coming off back to back 40%+ gain quarters in advertising revenue—second only to Google (and well ahead of Yahoo). His biggest strength at AOL—in my mind—was buying promising startups and giving them tons of support, no red tape, and breathing room. Yahoo needs new blood and a focus on display advertising, with Ross [Levinsohn, former CEO of Fox Interactive and Miller's partner at VC firm Velocity Interactive] at his side you would have a very potent operator and M&A team.

Yahoo's best strategy right now is probably to build display advertising while buying and growing promising startups. Yahoo needs growth, Jon and Ross are growth guys (i.e. MySpace, Advertising.com, Weblogs, Inc, etc). As a bonus you have hundreds of VP/SVP/EVP level executives out there who are loyal to Jon and Ross, so you might see a talent influx with them at the helm, and talent wins.

Valleywag: You think he'd take the job?

Calacanis:

• Pro: It is the most challenging job in the space second to AOL
• Pro: Having reinvented AOL this would be cake walk/much more pleasant.
• Push: It would require a move from East to West coast—which is both a + and -
• Pro: It would be a great way to show the folks at [Time Warner] who's the man

I'd say if he gets the call he would most likely take it... big opps like this come along once every 5-10 years.

If anything, TreeHugger's sale marks a steady downward trend from the frothy days of 2004 and 2005, when the $519 million deal Dow Jones struck to acquire MarketWatch and the $25 million sale of Jason Calacanis's Weblogs Inc. to AOL sparked hopes of pricier blog buyouts to come. But they didn't materialize.

Instead, today, blogs like TreeHugger are evaluated more like conventional media properties, based on audience size, advertising, and growth rates, not eyeballs alone. And, of course, strategic fit matters. Discovery's TV viewers are naturally drawn to green blogs. Better for Discovery to own those blogs than let its cable audience drift away to them.

(Update: Valleywag is owned by Gawker Media, and Gawker's publisher, Nick Denton, is an investor in and advisor to TreeHugger.)

The major shareholders were Calacanis and partners Brian Alvey and Gordon Gould.

Gould was with Calacanis at the Silicon Alley Reporter, a 90s dot-com news outlet. He wanted Calacanis to sell the company; Calacanis waited too long and ended up having to sell for much less; Gould lost potential millions.

Then Gould bought into Weblogs, Inc., with most of his share in Blogsmith. So when WIN sold most every asset but Blogsmith, it looked like he'd get screwed again — especially if WIN opened up the Blogsmith platform as Calacanis kept hinting. But with this sale, the man can finally pocket some money — even if it's only a mil or two. And it looks like he did get screwed — Gould's share hadn't fully vested, so he didn't make much at all from this sale. Maybe next time, dude.

"Digging," of course, means voting for an article on Digg — the social news site now competing with AOL's new offering, Netscape Beta. Both WIN and Netscape are run by AOL rising star Jason Calacanis — who swears he's not competing with Digg. (Digg founder Kevin Rose begs to differ.)

"But someone scored major points recently," says the WINner, "by asking, 'Can someone 'Scape my article?'"

Mm, "scape." Like "scrape." Or "scab." How phonetically appropriate.

Netscape Beta [Official site]

1. Check the numbers: Digg rejects Weblogs, Inc. Long before Kevin Rose's social news site reportedly rejected $40 million from Yahoo, Rose (pictured) rejected $4 million from Jason Calacanis, owner of blog network Weblogs, Inc. Did it seem like a great deal? Sure, until Rose examined the deal more closely. If he accepted, he'd give up control of Digg — and only end up with one million bucks, all said and done. Now, with Calacanis launching his own social news site at AOL's Netscape, Rose has no reason to worry — Digg's about to launch a souped-up new version to blow Netscape back out of the water.

2. Don't get cocky: Facebook rejects Yahoo This failed deal (only reported here on Valleywag may have been the last hope for Facebook. The school-based social site needs a buyout or IPO to pay back some heavy venture capital investments. With a growing staff bringing high operating costs, and sparse ads and partnerships on the site, Facebook is nowhere meeting the newer, more rigorous standards for a public offering. So when Yahoo offered a reported $1.4 billion buyout, why didn't Facebook jump into the arms of its white knight? Because someone in charge — at this point, probably the VCs — is holding out for $2 billion. Will anyone offer that before Facebook's old and busted? Don't bet on it.
3. Don't burn the bridge: Chris Pirillo rejects Microsoft Just a few months ago, the already-successful tech pundit Chris Pirillo eyed Microsoft as an employer. After some interviews, Microsoft made an offer to the former Tech TV host. Their price was too low, but the affair ended amicably — Microsoft is still the major sponsor at Chris's annual tech conference, Gnomedex.

Well, not really. It's still painfully dull, even with the presence of Jason Calacanis (the AOL exec who calls out all bullshit — whether it exists or not). After Steve's opening commercial (skip it) you can hear the painfully unedited recording of a special Gillmor Gang. The first lines: "Hello?" "Hey, it's Jason." "Who is it?" GRIPPING INTRO, STEVE.

Highlights:

• Part 1. Steve greets Jason and ZDNet reporter Dan Farber: "Well, I'm gonna finish having some cereal. So I'll be back in a minute."
• Dan to Jason: "You're great.... At that." Nice save Dan! Now hide your shrine.
• About two minutes in, Jason realizes how stupidly boring this show will be. After the jump, so can you.

• Jason: "Half the pages on Wikipedia will be locked in two years."
• OMG boring. Skip two-thirds through part 1, where Steve acts like a clumsy amateur porn director: "I'm recording everything. Keep going. I'm in the background."
• Part 2. Jason says cool things about his Weblogs, Inc. network — which, you know, is a groovy network if you're into that.
• The awesome part: End of the Part 2. Steve to Jason about something that matters: "Who cares?" Ohhhhhh irony.
• Jason compares himself to Quentin Tarantino. Sounds accurate, really. (Pictured)

Don't bother listening to Part 3.

Oh, and Jason insulted TechCrunch, and Michael Arrington got huffy about it. Which is a shame, because ragging on your competitors is no way to run a blog.

Gillmor Gang [Official site]
On Conflicts of Interest and TechCrunch [CrunchNotes]
Earlier ragging on a Gawker Media competitor: Jason Calacanis, secret king of AOL [Valleywag]

Ryan Block to bloggers
May 18 (13 hours ago)
today's anti-digg: http://digg.com/links/Engadget_Bullies_Smaller_Blog,_Demands_Video_Be_Altered

kindly appreciated

Not sure what an anti-digg is, but you're smart people, you'll figure it out. And for the record, Ryan Block is probably a very cool guy who doesn't deserve this juvenile mockery. But, well, ya know.

Earlier: AOL's Jason Calacanis and Engadget editor harass small-time tech blogger [Valleywag]

Hey Andru,

Hope you're well. Saw your video; needed you to know that Chris, Vlad, nor I consented to being filmed by GearLive (nor anyone else), and would appreciate being removed and not named. Thanks!

Best, Ryan

Seems fair, but it's actually not — U.S. law doesn't require consent for appearing in non-defamatory, non-commercial (i.e. non-product-endorsing) video, especially when the subject knows he's being recorded.

Andru, confused at Ryan's request, e-mailed a Microsoft representative, who replied:

Hi Andru - after doing a quick check, there is no reason for you to remove the video. You are free to keep it on your site. Thanks for checking in with me on this.

But then Andru heard from Jason Calacanis founder and manager of Engadget owner Weblogs, Inc.:

Why would you run that video without our consent?

j

It's one thing for a blog editor to go overboard on consent requests. It's quite another for an executive overseeing over 100 bloggers — an executive who's worked in media for over a decade — to make that mistake.

But it's doubtful that this is some devious move to kill Engadget's competition. Every blogger gets overprotective now and then, and it's probably just a big misunderstanding. (Granted, Andru's legally in the clear as long as Ryan knew the video was being recorded.)

Still, as nice as Ryan seems, did this need to go all the way to his boss? Why does the public editor of a leading tech blog care about one little video?

Updates after the jump.

Engadget Upset At E3 Video Appearance [Andru Edwards weblog]
The Bleeding Edge 013: Interview: Microsoft's Peter Moore [Gear Live]

UPDATE: Ryan defends himself on Digg:

I did not request Andru pull his video completely, I requested he pull references to Engadget, Joystiq, and our appearances from his video. I don't see anything wrong with this. He's free to use Moore's answers to my questions, that's totally cool, but I didn't consent to being on his video, which was taken during an exclusive session with Moore. Can someone please tell ME why I'm not allowed to ask to not appear in someone's video without having previously consented?

• Five people demoed products. The tipster wouldn't name the people or projects.
• "At the core," Jason's Netscape revamp will run "the next level of social bookmarking" — rumored to be a mainstream version of tech bookmark site Digg.
• Weblogs, Inc. blogger C. K. Sample III is Jason's right-hand man for the project.
• The tipster praised "this whole extra layer to it that will be the true hotness." 1) The True Hotness would make a great band name. 2) Any guesses what this "extra layer" will be?
• At one meeting, Jason gently spanked a guy who begged for a linkfarm powered by Weblogs, Inc. "Sorry, we're going to be classy," was Jason's reported tone. (The massive linklists on the right and bottom of any Weblogs, Inc. blog don't count.)

That should tide AOL fans — all both of 'em — over 'til Jason blogs it all.

Earlier: Jason Calacanis, secret king of AOL [Valleywag]

Team AOL,

I'm going to be in Dulles next Friday, April 28th and I wanted to invite *anyone* at AOL to come to a completely open discussion of where we should take *our* company. There are a lot of folks I haven't had a chance to meet and I thought this might be a good way to reach out to everyone.

It may sound like Jason wants credit for everyone's good ideas — or that he thinks he can sell a new idea to the VPs when everyone else has failed. But that's cynical. Clearly, Jason must have been promoted to CEO and he's just too humble to say so.

Or he's just beefing up his AIM buddy list.

AOL Open Office Hours (in Dulles next Friday): Let's talk product! [Jason Calacanis]

Secret spelling fix update: Thanks to AOL's C.K. Sample for proofreading Valleywag!

Back then, Battelle was at the tech news outlet Industry Standard, claiming that he'd take over Calacanis's competing Silicon Alley Reporter. Calacanis threatened to use JohnBattelle.com to cover conflicts of interest when Battelle wrote about his investors' companies.

The two are still rivals, with members of Battelle's blog ad network FM Publishing competing with Calacanis's blog network. But that's not all the bad blood between the two media mini-moguls. Here's a guide to just one cluster of the thick web of techcest:

Diagram by Dan Lurie
JohnBattelle.com registration [Whois]

AOL's blog network, Weblogs, Inc., jumps into the local-blogging pool with Blogging Ohio. In true Weblogs, Inc. style, the blog sports a massive right column of intra-network links, as well as a mighty footer full of article links. Somewhere between these, the graphic ads, and the text ads, is info you can't find on the two major city-specific networks, Metroblogging and Gothamist.

So for now, Weblogs, Inc. is your one stop for wide-eyed blog posts about drunk guys in Cincinnati, and cheap living, and the author's cold sores. Thrilling!

Not that we're biased here or anything.

UPDATE: A friend of Valleywag points out Weblogs, Inc.'s master plan to take over the U.S. — after the jump.

Blogging Ohio [BloggingOhio.com]

Someone checked domain registration for some other bloggable members of the union:

Domain Name: BLOGGINGWESTVIRGINIA.COM
Registrar: GO DADDY SOFTWARE, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
Name Server: NS3.WEBLOGSINC.COM
Name Server: NS1.WEBLOGSINC.COM
Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK
Updated Date: 25-aug-2005
Creation Date: 30-jul-2004
Expiration Date: 30-jul-2006

Says the tipster, "Apparently they went insane and bought all 50 states."

Calacanis (from across the room): "You're Perez Hilton!"

Perez (after a huge hug): "You're rich, you're hot... now tell me you're gay!"

Calacanis: "Two out of three ain't bad right?!?"

Calacanis' sale to AOL certainly makes him richer than most bloggers. And we'll let the jury decide on "hot." But the man who told Wired he dresses his fianc e as a schoolgirl for Halloween? About as gay as Donald Trump.

Perez and Calacanis—The True Hollywood Story Transcript [Calacanis.com]