Wait a second. It seems that everyone is missing one key element of the latest faux-controversy about Facebook. What is Jason Calacanis doing back on Facebook?
Calacanis kicked off the latest bitching session today by posting an email he sent to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg. In it, he chastises the social network for not having an opt-in policy for its new Groups feature. But wait — how would he even know how the new feature works? Didn’t he say over and over and over again that he was done with Facebook? → Read More
In our ongoing coverage of the life and times of Jason Calacanis, the video below is instructive on many levels. Calacanis—who is an Internet entrepreneur (the CEO of Mahalo), conference organizer (our former partner in TechCrunch50), and Web celeb—loves to play high stakes poker.
In fact, this week he will be one of the players on The Big Game, airing on Fox, in which businessmen are paired up with pros. In the clip below, Calacanis loses a $204,400 pot to ten-time World Series Of Poker champion Doyle Brunson, who beats his two kings with three sixes. Brunson was ran the river card three times, and won each time.The look of disbelief on Calacanis’ face at the end is priceless. “It looks like the Internet millionaire just had a server crash,” intones one of the commentators. And before that, “Jason is not a very experienced player.” Ouch. → Read More
You’ve heard the term “betting the company,” but have you ever known anyone who has actually done that? I mean literally. As in, they’re playing poker with shares of the company on the line. Because that’s exactly what Yammer founder David Sacks and Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis are doing at The World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.
When Calacanis first tweeted about it, I thought it was a joke. He wrote, “Got a sick @WSOP Main Event Prop bet with @DavidSacks: 10,000 shares of Mahalo vs. 10,000 shares of @Yammer–whoever lasts longer #poker“. But I emailed Sacks to confirm, and sure enough, the bet is on. “Of course. Sucker born every minute,” Sacks wrote to us. He continued, “To be clear, these are personally-owned shares we’re betting.” → Read More
With regard to his recent spat with Facebook we don’t exactly see eye-to-eye with Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis. But this morning, we did when an incident showed just how hard it is to delete your Facebook profile. But after reading that post, someone brought up a very good point. You know where else it’s hard to delete your account? Mahalo.
Seriously, try to figure it out. You won’t be able to because apparently there is no option to do it on the site itself. In fact, according to these two pages you have to email someone at Mahalo to do it. At least Facebook has a (albeit hidden) button! → Read More
This morning, we got a tip that despite all the hubbub about Jason Calacanis deleting his Facebook profile, it was still active. Sure enough, it was. So what gives?
We emailed Calacanis to find out what the deal was — was he just bluffing about deleting his account? It’s hard to believe that was the case considering just how vocal he’s been against Facebook, and he even has video proof of him deleting the account. But as the video shows, there’s actually a 14-day wait period before you can actually delete your account. In those 14-days, your profile is simply “deactivated.” But as of this morning (way more than 14 days after that video was shot), Calacanis’ account wasn’t deleted, nor was it even inactive, it was there in full glory (complete with a cute “Facebook Ghost” picture). → Read More
In his most recent email blast-turned-blog post, Jason Calacanis has chosen a familiar subject: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The post is more focused than his previous one about Zuckerberg, but in some ways, it’s more outrageous as well. In case you haven’t been following along for the past couple of months, Calacanis is no fan of Zuckerberg and the way he’s handled the recent privacy fiasco or his company. He’s hardly alone. But in this latest post, Calacanis (humorously) compares himself to Serpico, the whistle-blowing cop (a real-life figure) played by Al Pacino, in Sidney Lumet’s 1973 film of the same name. And he gives Zuckerberg five “simple” ways to make Facebook more trustworthy.
Calacanis has asked for a response to his thoughts, so I figured I’d write it out just as I did to respond to his “The Case Against Apple-in Five Parts” rant last Summer. To be clear, many of Facebook’s recent privacy issues are very real. And Facebook, as usual, has done a poor job addressing many of them and managing the backlash. That said, the overall implication Calacanis keeps making that Facebook (or Zuckerberg in particular) is in some way an evil force out to screw us all is silly. Calacanis brings up Serpico, but this actually reminds me of another Lumet/Pacino pairing: Dog Day Afternoon. In that film at one point, Pacino’s bank robbing character, Sonny, starts screaming “Attica! Attica!” over and over again, invoking the Attica Prison riots in order to get the people to rise up against the police.
So is Calacanis Frank Serpico? Or is he Sonny Wortzik? The five points: → Read More
Today at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York, Square co-founder Jack Dorsey took the stage to show a demo of Square running on the iPhone. To do the demo, Dorsey had a good idea: take money from Michael Arrington.
Dorsey took $100 from Mike with the swipe of a credit card. Mike was concerned about Dorsey’s intentions for the money, but it will actually go towards Charity Water as a donation, Dorsey assured. He then sat down to talk a bit with Mike and Erick Schonfeld about Square, and his experience raising funding. → Read More
Silicon Valley investors often have a picture in their heads of the type of person who is worthy of funding: young, brash, stubborn, and arrogant. They believe that successful entrepreneurs come from entrepreneurial families and that they start their entrepreneurial journey by selling lemonade while in grade school. Angel investor and entrepreneur, Jason Calacanis said as much in his recent talk to Penn State students. And after meeting Wharton students, VC Fred Wilson expressed shock when a professor told him that you could teach people to be entrepreneurs. Wilson wrote, “I’ve been working with entrepreneurs for almost 25 years now and it is ingrained in my mind that someone is either born an entrepreneur or is not.”
Jason, Fred, and Silicon Valley VCs, I’ve got news for you: you’ve got it all wrong. Entrepreneurs aren’t born, they’re made. And they aren’t anything like you think they are. → Read More
Jason Calacanis isn’t a a nobody. He’s a serial web entrepreneur, founder of Weblogs, Inc., co-founder of TechCrunch50 and CEO of search engine Mahalo (amongst others). And just a few minutes ago, via his Twitter account, he (possibly) dropped some major hints on the Apple tablet that’s going to be presented tomorrow. Calacanis claims he has been given a tablet by Apple ten days ago, adding “For background: apple asked me to do press tomorrow on cnbc, cnn, etc.”.
If he isn’t pulling a major PR stunt (I think he isn’t), Calacanis is stoked. Here’s the gist of what he says about the device. I know many of you are sick of hearing about it, and this may turn out to be totally false info tomorrow – but what he said seemed just too interesting.
Editor’s Note – Serkan has been beaten. There is nothing to see here. → Read More
Coupon site Savings.com just got a redesign and a new board member: Mahalo CEO (and TechCrunch50 co-host) Jason Calacanis. “They’ve broken $10 million in revenue after just a couple of years,” says Calacanis, “and are crushing it in the deals space. Obviously this is a great place to be in a recession.”
The redesign is aimed at making the site more social for those virtual coupon clippers (hey, don’t laugh, we should all be trying to save more money these days) who want to just live to tell everyone they know about the great deals they found.
The site offers coupons from about 3,400 merchants, including the Gap, Restoration Hardware, and even the San Diego Zoo. The site is basically a coupon search engine, organized by brands, stores, and shopping categories. The new design is much more social—as far as a coupon site can be social. Each deal can be voted up, commented on, or shared (via Twitter, Facebook, Digg, reddit, delicious, or email). And members can submit their own deals. → Read More
Update on the tech gurus at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. We were tracking four players: Facebook exec Chamath Palihapitiya, Mahalo CEO Jason Calcanis, Geni/Yammer CEO David Sacks and former Yahoo exec David Goldberg. At least two are now out of the game.
Jason Calacanis and Chamath Palihapitiya busted out on day 2 (apparently Calacanis’ ridiculous gangster costumer only took him so far). David Sacks is going strong into the third day with $116,000 in chips. We have no information at all on Goldberg (please let us know).
Sacks, who won $25k in prize money last year, will need to stay in the game another day or two to match that previous performance. The total pot being split by the top 10% or so of players is likely around $50 million.
Sacks let us know today that he would not be speaking at our sold out Real-Time Stream CrunchUp on Friday because, well, he’ll be playing poker. He requested that co-founder Adam Pisoni take his place on stage.
We’re going to let our readers decide in the poll below. → Read More
When newbies sign up to Twitter now, they are presented with a list of 100 suggested users to start following. Simply being on that list can boost your followers well above 100,000. Several people and organizations on the list (such as Al Gore, Lance Armstrong, Kevin Rose, the New York Times, and CNN) now have more than 250,000 followers each. Many of the most popular Twitter users are on the list, including TechCrunch (we have 214,465 followers). It is insane.
Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis, who is no Twitter slouch himself with 61,266 hard-earned followers, thinks that being one of the top 20 on the suggested list will be worth as much as a Superbowl ad within five years. He is offering Twitter $250,000 to lock in a spot on the suggested list for two years, or $120,000 for one year. I emailed Calacanis (who is our partner in putting on the TechCrunch 50 conference) and he confirms the offer is dead serious. In fact, he contacted Twitter co-founders Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams last week about it, and is lobbying investor Fred Wilson. Calacanis writes: → Read More
In his latest email newsletter, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis discusses “How To Handle Layoffs.” It is a topic he knows too well, having had to go through a layoff of 10 percent of his staff earlier today. After repeating the text of his blog post announcing the layoffs, he offers some advice for other entrepreneurs on how to do it right. The email newsletter is reprinted below in its entirety.
Update: Why this is news. There is a lot of discussion, even outrage, in the comments and elsewhere about my decision to post this email, against the express wishes of its author and his subsequent request that it be taken down. We are not going to do that.
Like it or not, this document is news. → Read More
