[Search-l] 10 People Powered Search Engines

Mon Aug 6 18:20:49 UTC 2007

>
> But what Mahalo is doing is totally uninteresting to me because it is
> proprietary.  It doesn't change the structure of the industry.
>

[ uncloaking:nemesis ]

Two notes on that:

1. We're proprietary in that we protect our copyrighted work... sure.
However we're, in fact, considering a CC non-commercial license for the work
we *pay* to create. We are open source in that we submit our changes to
MediaWiki and other open source projects to the public.

2. Even proprietary content can change the world and do amazing work.
Google, EBay, documentary films (i.e. Michael Moore's), Jared Diamond's
books, Yochi Benkler's books, the TV show Battlestar Gallactica, Star Trek,
etc. are all "proprietary." And by proprietary we mean copyrighted works
that are protected so their authors ability to make a living!

Not everyone makes a living off of copyrighting their work (some folks make
it by starting startup companies like Wikia and Mahalo), but many people
chose to make money from their words (i.e. Yochi, screenplay writers, etc).
It's OK for them to protect their work and get paid for it--it's not an
"uninteresting" thing to everyone. Certainly the art created by protected
artists is not uninteresting.

It's very backhanded to be honest Jimmy, but you're the master of the
backhanded insult and I've got the list of ones you've sent my way right
here. :-) Keep throwing that word "uninteresting" around and try to stick it
to Mahalo in some negative hole by saying it is proprietary.... fine with
me. I'm PROUD of the fact that we pay our writers. We had 300 paid writers
at Weblogs, Inc. making blogs like Engadget, Joystiq, HackADay, etc. and
they were able to make great art and pay their bills. I like helping people
pay their bills.

You are the one with the proprietary model in fact, and it comes in the most
important aspect of all: compensation.

As people work for you for free the value of your stock goes up. wikia did
it's last round at a value of $25-40M--at the least. You and your venture
investors will some day make millions on the backs of people working for
free. why not "open source" your compensation? Like pay the folks writing
for your wikis (if they want to get paid). Wouldn't that be more open?

In my world-view we are trying to make a compensation system for people who
work on the project (other than the management team and venture capitalists
that is). We now have ~1,000 folks in our Greenhouse (
http://greenhouse.mahalo.com) who are getting paid $10-15 for writing search
results. In the first six weeks on person did over 100 and I'm sure will go
on to do 100-200 search results per month and make 1,5000 to 3,000 a month
in part-time income. We're not even up to month two and we've accepted close
to 2,000 search terms from the public.... AND WE PAID THEM FOR THEIR
EFFORTS.

Many of our Greenhouse Guides--and anyone can sign up to help at
http://greenhouse.mahalo.com--are from the Wikipedia and DMOZ projects. They
are folks who HAVE worked for free and who know are LOVING the fact that
someone is offering them some level--not huge, but something--of
compensation for their work.

In order to protect the ability to pay folks to write search results we need
to not give those search results out to anyone.

As I've told you the two times we've met in person, I have great respect for
what you've done with wikipidia, especially you gifting a $5B a project to
the public. That was perhaps one of the greatest gifts in the history of
philanthropy. I mean, think about... other billionaires give away half their
billions, you gave away an absolutely certain chance to be a billionaire
before you ever saw dime one leaving you as "just a millionaire".... for
that you have my respect. Honestly, I think the world of you for that.
You're a mensch beyond compare (except when you're thowing me under the
bus).

I believe you're being a little intellectually dishonest to dismiss us as
being some different beast than Wikia. We are both venture-backed companies
looking to change search. The main difference is:

a) you don't pay your content providers, but you do give their work away for
free

and

b) we pay our content providers, and we protect their work from being
monetized *when* that monetization decreases our ability to pay them in the
future. So, if a non-profit wants to syndicate our results we would do it in
a heartbeat.... if a for-profit company like Answers.com wants to? Well,
they need to split revenue or send us a check so we can keep paying our
writers.

I do wish Wikia great success and I don't dismiss your model as
"uninteresting" because it is different than my world view. I would say that
your model of people working for your venture-backed company for free is
"suspect," and perhaps even "troubling."

As a writer by trade I always find it very insulting/odd when companies ask
me to work for free while they get rich... who knows, maybe you can pull
this model off. I for one, have a problem with the Tom Sawyer "paint the
fence" business model. Who knows, maybe your considering a more Mahalo-style
payment system in the future.

In short: Working for free on Wikipedia who's stock has no monetary value
and is 100% given to the public? Great. Working for free on Wikia to make
venture capitalists and the management team rich? Suspect.

Seth: You're not a troll as Jimmy has labeled you. In my book you're a
conversation catalyst and I think your presence make us all better.

Note: We hope to participate in the development of Grub in the same way we
are contributing to MediaWiki. If Grub works well we will not only use it at
Mahalo, we will be the #2 resource to it's development behind only Wikia
itself.

best j
---------------------
Jason McCabe Calacanis
CEO, http://www.Mahalo.com
Mobile: 310-456-4900
My blog: http://www.calacanis.com
AOL IM/Skype: jasoncalacanis
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