Couple of updates on the “paying people to bookmark” brouhaha (aka “Calacanis vs. Rose” or “the offer”)… but first, a special treat. Turns out the 784 lawyers at AOL are reading my blog and they asked me to be extra, extra clear about the offer (and they even wrote these point in my vocie for me–how nice!):

1. To qualify, you must be one of our top bloggers on a social news site like Newvine, Delicious, Reddit, etc.
2. If you are interested you have to email me at jason at calacanis dot com.
3. We will decide in our sole discretion on who we will pick as our 12 social bookmarkers for Netscape. If you’re selected, we’ll follow up with an e-mail to you with our terms. Keep in mind that I’m making this offer for a limited time.

OK, now that we have that over with:

• Kevin Rose, the found of DIGG, respond to my blog post about him dogging me, but he will not address the issue of contributors getting paid seriously. I posted a comment asking him to respond, but he hasn’t (and I don’t think he will frankly).
• Dave Winer, who’s opinion on these issues I respect deeply, checks in on the issue.
• Steven Johnson is gonna speak on the issue at some point…. looking forward to that. SJ is +++.
• Tysonhy, the #1 users on DIGG, is not taking us up on the offer. I respect him for doing bookmarking for the love of it–and when we announce the first five bookmarkers we sign up I hope people respect their right to be paid!
• I started talking with Tyson about it before we launched Netscape (proof that this was not a desperate move like Mike Arrington said on TechCrunch, but rather always part of the plan).
• I talk about the offer with Mike Arrington and the Gillmor Gang on the last two episodes (called Resignation Gang Parts I & II due to Mike Arrington resigning).
• Chris Pirillo talks with Mike Davidson of Newsvine about “the offer.”
• We’ll have an announcement about the first 5-10 Navigators shortly (we’ve got top 10 users from various sites signed up)
• Valleywag has a story about us not offering Navigator positions to current Netscape users. To be clear, we will offer positions to the top Netscape users down the road. The current offer is for folks who have been bookmarking for over six months and who are in the top 10-20 users on a service. Since Netscape is ~30 days old no one on Netscape has been doing it for that long. When Netscape is a couple of months old we’re certainly gonna look at the top 10 and consider paying some of those folks.

I’m leaving today for a week in Boston… in August (ugh, 97 degrees!).

Details:
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Days
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Citizen_Journalism

My cell: 310-456-4900

I’ve been getting my chops busted about “the call” and transparency at AOL for a couple of weeks now. One person told me that if I really believed in AOL that I would publish people support calls to my personal blog. In the spirit of true transparency, owning our issues, and trying to be a better company I will publish any and all calls to our support lines here on my blog. Not only that, I will personally transcribe the calls and give you my honest feedback on them.

Note: I have nothing to do with the access business. I couldn’t even tell you who runs the access business at AOL or how they run their department. However, I just checked my badge and it says AOL on it, so clearly it’s my responsibility.

Email your MP3 files jason at calacanis dot com.

Went looking for a house in LA this past week and sellers are starting to panic. Two years ago when I started looking it was the buyers were in a panic. You were told to make an offer within a day of seeing a house, and to send a letter to the owner about how privileged you would be if they would sell you their home. Of course you should offer 10% more than the asking price–you don’t want to be rude!

When we looked last week three of the eight houses were “flips” by real estate brokers. That is, houses they bought, remodeled and were no reselling. Those three “flips” were on the market for 30-120 days and had all been recently reduced 10-15% from their original asking price. Within 10 minutes of walking in each of the brokers said they had room to work, and that they could make changes to the home (i.e. we could put a room here or a pool–whatever you want).

The most telling part for me was that the brokers themselves are looking to get out. They want out so bad that they are willing to reduce the price by 10-15% not once, but twice, over ~60 days. Of course, after three years of 20% increases in Los Angeles a 20-30% discount bring you back to 2005–which I guess will be known as the peak.

Also, there was very little traffic at the open houses we drove by this weekend.

Anyone else looking for a home right now? What are you seeing?

Will someone give this guy a 30 minute slot on f-ing TV already. Hello main-stream media companies wake up!!!!!! (oh wait…

Check this one out:
http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/07/072706.html

Michael Grass at The Washington Post Express blog asked me to comment on “the call.” I checked with the corpcom group at AOL and they told me it was fine to respond so I did.

[ For background, when I'm asked to comment about things outside of my little fiefdom at AOL (i.e. not Netscape, Weblogs, Inc. or Blogsmith) I always ask AOL if their cool with it as a courtesy. I can go ahead and speak if I want to, but I don't. It's a great policy for me to check in because, frankly, commenting on things outside my direct control at AOL (like the call centers) tends to get spun by the press (i.e. they can take my blunt comments and spin them as "AOL exec says AOL employees hate AOL search!). This kind of spinning by the media makes everyone's life really hard as you can imagine. Anyway, thought folks would be interested since I know many executives are interested in what it's like to be a blogging executive. ]

So, some updates on the story:

• I posted my email interview in whole here.
• You can read the WashPost story here.
• The Consumerist–which is my favorite blog by Gawker Media right now–has commented on my comments. I’ve posted two follow up comments. It’s a great discussion.. I hope other AOL executives join it (I can get you an invite if you need one–or post for you!).

“The call” was a dark day here at AOL. Imagine being one of the thousands of folks working nights and weekends to turn our company around and you wake up to “the call” as the top story on TV, the web, and in print. Horrible. Brutal. Infuriating. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…………….

How would I handle the issue if it was my department? Off the top of my head:

1. I would institute a “one and done” rule when it comes to upselling people. When you go to McDonald’s or the Movies they ask you to Supersize once. If they ask you twice it’s moved from a courtesy (i.e. I might actually have wanted fries) to an imposition.
2. I would do 10 dummy cancel calls a day and put the MP3s on a website the same day with feedback on what we did right and wrong until the public feels good about us again.

Anyone out there a member of the Grand Havana Room? I was thinking of becoming a member since they have locations both in NYC and LA. They say they have a six month waiting list here in LA.

The WashPost asked me to comment on “the call.” Here is the email exchange…

> I’m working on a little feature about AOL/the lingering Vincent Ferrari
> hubbub/and your response to the Economist’s analysis of the state of
> AOL from earlier in the spring. Granted what you’ve written on your
> blog pretty much lays everything out, but I was wondering if I could
> ask you a few quick questions for greater context:

Sure.

> What is it like to do the interesting work you’re doing to develop new
> products for AOL in the midst of the lingering public image problems
> that AOL still has. As you’ve written, AOL is in transition, but I’m
> curious how you’re feeling since Weblogs Inc.’s purchase by AOL last
> year. I guess people still think of AOL as the subscriber service from
> the 1990s and don’t realize the new products coming from AOL. Is that
> something that’s frustrating?

It’s gonna take some time for us to deal with some of the issues around the AOL brand. “The phone call” made me and my team crazy–as well as the public. It was horrible and it’s something that no one wants to be associated with, but we are. From what I understand we take hundreds of thousands a calls a month and this is not the average experience. I’m not involved in the access business at all, so I can’t really speak to the details to be honest.

The bottom line is that my job is to put my head down and work to make new experiences and services that users fall in love with. There are so many great things going on including Engadget, Autoblog, TMZ, Netscape, our security software, AIM Pro, and Uncut Video that are absolutely loved by users. It’s sad that these things have to be associated with “the call.”

So, yes it is a bummer.

> Also, is the Vincent Ferrari affair something still hanging over
> everyone’s head or is it just a passing annoyance?

I can’t speak for everyone at the company, but I know I think about it every day since it’s happen. When I look at the AOL logo I hear that call, and I don’t think I’m alone. Everyone at AOL should listen to that at the start of their day in order to put fire in their belly. It was a disgrace, it’s not what we’re about, and we’ve taken ownership of it. We can actually use this as a way to focus our efforts even more.

It’s going to go down as a watershed moment for the company. Sometimes the darkest hour is before the dawn, and I think that is what that call will come to symbolize: a new era for the company.

FYI: I’m gonna post this full interview to my blog after you do your post.

best j

GapingVoid nails it again… in six months paying top bookmarkers will seem obvious.

I’m tuning into the AlwaysOn conference in the background right now.

http://www.bambuproductions.com/AlwaysOn/