Reflections on Jason Calacanis Keynote

On Tuesday at SES Chicago,

Calacanis was offensive, to some. Not to me. His observation that "SEO is bullshit" is far from unique (Godin said similar, and so, I think, did those old Wired and Webmonkey one-pagers that used to rank so well for the term SEO). But to 75% of this audience, apparently it was blasphemy. What Calanacis meant was really not far different from what a number of the white hatters say, but it goes farther. Being very concerned about building a content business happens to focus so heavily on the fundamentals that of course it is good SEO in itself. People: I'm afraid he's right, or at least, how can you argue with success. Weblogs, Inc. got a whole lot of traffic from that attitude.

A number of other seemingly offensive points were fundamental defenses of the spirit of quality web experiences against deceptive ones. Not liking pay-per-post blog schemes is not exactly offensive, it's actually again, kind of a white hat statement.

He said a lot about his work at Netscape, recreating a Digg-like experience. I found the comments about paying the top 50 "content curators" to ensure a professional approach to editorial work quite insightful. Indeed it eerily paralleled the many specific discussions initiated and fostered by Traffick around the ODP debates which made us infamous around here. :) (There were forum discussions that are no longer accessible)

Danny really shouldn't have. He played word association with Calanacis. The first few things that came out of his mouth were cautious and respectful, and you got the feeling he was laboring to be statesmanlike. Then Danny mentioned Nick Denton ("Valleywag", to be precise) and lo and behold the venom spewed forth. "Slime" was one of the words he used. It seems there is no love lost between these two, but it's hard to really figure out why, other than the fact that these two were competitors and one likes to downplay his business accomplishments and the other to oversell them. And both make a living or a hobby out of offending people, it seems.

In the end, Calacanis' substance didn't offend me. I found it constructive. His style was easy to get past, for me, but not so much for those who don't appreciate that the play's the thing. So you have to conclude that the dismay with the man stems from some combination of fallout from his real-life actions, his self-promotional schtick, and the hypocrisy that inevitably surrounds the rhetoric of purity. Regardless, he'll probably hit a few more home runs before he's done. Andrew Goodman is Principal of Traffick.com, an acclaimed "guide to portals" which foresaw the rise of trends such as paid search and semantic analysis.