Search Engine Optimisation the organic marketing approach.

technology driven brand marketing

Jason Calacanis the brain behind Weblogs Inc closing a deal to AOL for a mere $25 million before that he single handed gave birth to Silicon Alley Media, now Jason is back and never one to take on a little challenge.

Jason Calacanis is set to change the way we Google. With a human powered search, yes you heard it right people on keyboards fine tuning the plethora of results Google spits out. These human search spiders gathers results from raw Google output and form a concise spam free relevant page of useful results.

A self confessed SEO slime hater the name Jason Calacanis sends shivers down the spines of many an internet marketer, you see Jason squarely blames most internet marketers as nothing better than used car salespeople with little to none in the gray matter upstairs and completely responsible for all the trash spam sites on the internet and worst of all index spam, and to be honest he is pretty smack on the truth!  

We for one are incredibly excited about the possibilities of his human powered search results, and would rid so much spam above the line marketing in the indexes and that has to be a good thing. Now you may think all this sounds a little strange and a bit backwards or stepping behind the times, but really it makes perfect sense.

This idea makes such sense that the idea has been rolled out with venture capital exceeding $20 million US, who has out up the wad I hear you ask? Backers of ‘Mahalo’ “thank you” in Hawaiian )  are none other than the rock solid investors of Sequoia Capital (original backers of Google, Yahoo CBS, News Corp; Elon Musk and Mark Cuban the founders of Pay Pal, Space X, chairman of Telsa Motors.

With this sort of backing is enough alone to make you sit up and take notice, bringing back the human element here is just the beginning of re evaluating the value real people have in the workforce.

While the rest of the blogging fraternity is heaving up there lunch and casting aspersions at this hard working self made entrepreneur  we for one are patting him on the back. Jason’s thorn; Gawker Media once described him as ‘brash; ballsy, publicity hungry and the web’s answer to Donald Trump’ all in the one breath “what a compliment” We like to think of him as a entrepreneur who still has principals and dare we say ethics, just what the marketing sheep could do with a left arm injection of ethics and creativity!

Jason’s background reads like a typical rags to riches saga, poor background hard neighborhood ‘Brooklyn and the tough Bay Ridge area at that. Standing at a mere 5ft 9 and a solid frame, this web genius is a black belt in tae kwon do  and when was a younger lad was known for not backing down.

With working in his fathers pub and mopping blood away Jason was no stranger to the harder knocks life could dish out. It may be an old story but that makes it no easier to to climb out of. In the early days of Silicon Alley Reporter, Jason could be seen stuffing publications into news stalls and getting his mag out where ever he possibly could, like all successful people Jason has a thirst to succeed.

You see the main drawing card of Jason is while the entire blogging and SEO world hate the guy everyone with vision a plan and ethics loves the guy.  

A simple concept  

How to raise $20million NO SWEAT!

A clever plan! A devilishly cunning plan sir!
To create a human powered search engine, with results that were concise and relevant to the search query, to give the searcher a list of results ‘no spam’ targeted useful real results. Imagine Search; that works!

Jason decided he would take the top of the search results skimming the cream of around 15,000 terms straight from the horses mouth as it were. Mahalo  would give results for searches like iPhone, or Tara Banks maybe Microsoft but would not return results for community level like local events or less trafficked terms. This makes searching so much more valuable for the user, business time is severed without the hassle of having to wade through thousands of irrelevant search results.

10 days to cash 

All it took Jason to secure the first round of negotiations for the birth of Mahalo with Sequoia, Musk, Cuban, Ted Leonsis of AOL, Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures and Matt Coffin, the founder of LowerMyBills.com. What is exciting about this is its simplicity, everyone wants simpler easier tools and this is what this is promising to deliver.

It all comes down to a shabby room full of technology and coffee  

Unlike Google powered by in excess of 200,000 servers we are not sure for sure as they will not tell us, and 10,000 employees Google is one hell of a resource user. (and we love you)

Mahalo on the other hand to date has around 20 servers and an expanding 60 staff, who have been aptly named ‘guides’  sit in front of twin 24in monitors and sift raw Google results and others to compile loverly relevant page of results. This process can take several hours just to complete one page of results, complexity of the keyword phrasing and other factors come into play.

Another bonus is the work is allowing the art and culture set some ware to get paid for what they do best, with many employees being in between books novelists, screen writers and artists at least people who still read are doing the research. A package of US$35,000 plus health the job is not to shabby at all for a good deal of young and old alike.

Jason over time expects to expand this human algorithm to over 100 strong, you see this brilliant concept needs Google and alike to work! Again shines the brilliance of young Jason. By using Google for the raw data and using the Google engine as backup to the results of Mahalo  so if you search for a term that has not been ‘optimized by humans’ then Google shows you the score.

With keeping one foot sound with Google Jason has ensured a safe playground to work from, with Google supplying ads for  Mahalo  with their AdSense product and with a referral revenue share going on Jason may just of created a ‘quofer’ a site that takes raw spam and turns it into useful authoritative information.

We cannot help but think for business this is a golden prospect, humans only filter out what is not worthy to be there, and again it goes to strengthen our stance on how important ‘branding’ is going to become in search and business technology marketing. Still for every skeleton of a search engine company left out there we still do not have that search solution, the one that vets the spam results, the AdSense spam sites, all the marketing dribble by sheep. We for one would welcome the ray of sunshine.

This idea if human search is not new Ask Jeeves did that nearly 10 years ago now, wow how time flies bye. Ask.com it goes by now and just a Google white hat solution at that, so again we cry for more relevant search results maybe this could help?

Even if Jason does have a solution that works will we use it? 

We as humans are a lazy bunch and when we are used to doing something one way it can take allot to persuade us differently. One you have achieved the status of ‘Hover’ or ‘Google’ once brand awareness has given way to brand building turning that tide can be more than Mohamed could take to muster. Making people switch from what they are used to will take some doing, but if anyone can grab a slice of that incredibly lucrative market of search, it is Jason.

We as people are always a click away from new and exciting  options some we take, the migration or flock from Myspace to FaceBook, they are only stop gap technologies so why not search? Google for now does not seem to care, and have a nice deal going anyway and when you are as big and rich as Google maybe you are a little more on the pace then you may perceive. No one knows what is around the corner but I can bet you it will be something we all just have to use or experience right now!

For now though we sit back and Google away sift through the first two pages of not worth looking at 90% of the time and delve into what we as people see as valuable.

How do you search? or is that how do you Mahalo! 

Jason Calacanis Current Projects:

CEO, Mahalo
Entrepreneur in Action, Sequoia Capital
CalacanisCast
The TechCrunch 20
Past Projects:
GM of Netscape
SVP at AOL
CEO & Co-founder of Weblogs, Inc
CEO & Founder of Rising Tide Studios
Founder of Silicon Alley Reporter
Blog: The Jason Calacanis Weblog
First activity of note: Silicon Alley Reporter
LinkedIn Profile