Calacanis can’t keep up with Facebook

by on July 28, 2007

I’ve been on Facebook, what, about six weeks? I have more than 4,000 friends so if anyone should be complaining about “Facebook chores” like adding new friends or dealing with “application spam” it should be me. Jason Calacanis has been on for a while and only has 395 friends and now is giving up because he hasn’t figured out how to keep up with “Facebook chores.”

Rex Hammock chides him. I’m not going to link directly to Jason, cause I want you to read Rex’s post first cause Rex has a good point on this issue.

My response? I LOVE WHEN PEOPLE GIVE UP ON FACEBOOK!

Why? Because Facebook is now a media distribution network (among other things).

I’m in the media creation and distribution business.

When Calacanis gives up that means there’s fewer competitors.

Media creation also means I need to be a professional networker. That’s why I go to TechCrunch parties — to find great people to interview. Last night I collected a stack of business cards. Those people get invited to join Facebook. Why? Facebook is the new business card AND the new media distribution network. Watch what’s happening with video inside Facebook. Watch what’s happening with applications.

More of the best names in tech are on Facebook than any other social network I’m on (and I’m on a ton of them).

I’m glad Jason isn’t taking the time to do it.

Anyone else in this business want to avoid Facebook? Please do it! Means more opportunity for the rest of us.

Speaking of which, I’m gonna leave a little video message on this topic for Jason over on my Facebook profile.

UPDATE: as an example, over on Facebook I just shared a video done by Terry Storch and Brian Bailey on the Blogging Church (Brian blogs for one of the biggest churches in the USA). Facebook is the ultimate “pass along” video source. No one person gets huge distribution, but get passed along enough and a sizeable audience will show up. In fact, I can’t add more than 5,000 friends in Facebook so the audience size of any one person will always be small. But the passalong is huge. The app platform there works the same way — virally. Anyone miss that iLike got millions of visitors in the first two weeks? I didn’t.

  • Okay, I guess I shouldn't have called the guy a weenie.
    He's not a weenie but his actions do seem a little bit dramatic.
  • triggerbug
    Greate quotes:
    "LinkedIn is the MBA/Put-on-a-suit type of networking. Facebook is the irresponsible younger sibling of LinkedIn. MySpace is like the squalling brat toddler of Facebook."

    For business networking -- use LinkedIn.
    For networking with your friends -- use Pownce.

    Facebook is dying a slow death. Time to cash out boys.
  • I am curious to the draw of having so many friends on social networking sites. Is it strictly the logistics of distribution, or is there a draw to being a "social media rockstar"?

    I take a contrarian view to Facebook because I have been using the service for almost three years. When I first started, I added everyone I knew from my classes, other fraternities, friends from high school, and etc. I joined the groups, posted the silly drunk pictures, and made silly wall posts.

    When I graduated, I made an effort to clean up my online image and pruned off some of the "dead weight". Now, my network is comprised of people from my past I want to stay in contact with, and people I want to meet in the future. I have joined a few groups, and met interesting people including the director of marketing for an Indian organic beverage company, a globe-trotting blogger for the Washington Post, and a discussion-inspiring MIT grad. In addition, I use it to track status updates of my teenage cousin to make sure she stays out of trouble. Unfortunately, she has yet to learn that updating her status every five minutes is an inappropriate way to reflect her mood.

    I think that people are still figuring out how to use Facebook most efficiently because it is new, and it's a footrace for the most friends.
  • One of my new Facebook friends made a great observation: LinkedIn is the MBA/Put-on-a-suit type of networking. Facebook is the irresponsible younger sibling of LinkedIn. MySpace is like the squalling brat toddler of Facebook.
    Facebook is a great way to network that is more relaxed than LinkedIn and it's great.
    Calacanis is a weenie. I thought one of the points of social media communication was to meet new people (some will be cheeseballs, some will be people that could impact your life in a huge way). Would someone please tell him he's not that important? I don't know the guy but please pass along my message. Thanks.
  • peter78
    Scoble, thanks for responding. I'm glad you get it. Here's my response:

    Facebook: Calacanis Smokes Crack, Scoble Gets It
  • Jon Green
    Did you find any great people to interview at the TechCrunch party? I did not, particularly. I found a bunch of people sniffing each other's butts like dogs at the park, with a "how can you help me?" attitude rather than a "hey, look at this cool thing we're creating" attitude. I left the party by 8:30. But maybe I missed something. :)
  • Joe
    Well, isn't this just dandy? Jason is chugging along in his classic self promoting, master linkbaiter ways. We all know that Google has the "algorithm". Well you see, linkbaiting is Jason's personal "algorithm". It's his "secret sauce" which isn't much of a secret these days for those in the know in the web 2.0 world. Mahalo's traffic is sliding by the day so it seems Jason has slyly resorted to writing blog posts with links to Mahalo pages. When he got called out on this in his blog's comments section this week by some people, he throws a hissy fit by closing off comments. And to create more controversy (translation more buzz for himself and possibly Mahalo), he goes on a facebook rant.

    IMO, it's a pretty comical to see the CEO of a heavily VC funded company behave like such a web 2.0 drama queen. Constant self promotion may be part of the game for professional bloggers but as Britney Spears would say... "come on y'all"... it looks kind of pathetic for a Sequoia funded startup CEO to be this drama-tastic. Maybe self promotion is just Jason being Jason...maybe it helped get him where he is today since Weblogs was a decent $25 mil exit but he's in even bigger leagues these days based on the foolishly inflated ~$100m valuation he took with Mahalo which will greatly increase the pressure for an exit of hundreds of millions to make his backers happy. That's a lot of expectations breathing down his back. He could have created Mahalo by taking much less money considering the technology is basically a locked down Wikimedia platform with a bunch of low paid human guides churning out static pages with links. Had Jason taken less VC money, then theoretically, a much lower bar would exist for a successful exit i.e. take $3-5 mil VC funding then possibly exit for $50-100 mil. He's kind of put himself in a corner if Mahalo doesn't start panning out. But he took the most money possible likely due to his Himalayan sized ego. It was none other than "Puff Daddy" or was it "P Diddy" or "Diddy", or whatever his name is these days who sang 'Mo VC Money, Mo Problems'. Mahalo is still only 2 months old but it's not exactly riding high on momentum right now. This may explain Jason's pissiness these days. Maybe all those Facebook friend requests only serve to remind him how active Facebook's platform is. Many would say Facebook is the king of web 2.0...and well, we already know who the queen is.
  • Sam I Am
    Daniel, I'm not sure if you're aware, but you don't actually see all the notifications based on your friends movements/clicks etc. FB already filters out a ton of stuff there. Personally I find it quite manageable because of this. The only thing I find annoying is certain apps looking a little cruddy compared to FB's design, but it's no worse that looking at Amazon's homepage (along with 99 out of a 100 other websites!). If you don't know the person and don't want to build up your 'friends', then hit the ignore button.
  • Marc
    The reason why Jason is not allowing comments is because he wants more people to comment on their own blog and link to his, thereby artificially boosting his page rank.
    It's not elitist in asmuch as it is self serving.
  • While it's a nice idea, facebook has become the 'haven' for all those people who are trying to get rich quick. The 'marketplace' is filled with people hawking affiliate links and "win a free iphone" garbage. People who don't know me started to want to add me. I messaged a few and they seemed genuinely interested in sharing ideas and networking, but all was revealed, they just wanted to spam me. The signal to noise is terrible, even with real friends. A notice everytime a person adds an application, a picture, anything. I doubt I even have 50 people on facebook, but it's ridiculous how much unnecessary notifications. Yes, you can turn them off. Individually. But as more and more people write facebooks apps, it just creates more and more apps i have to turn notifications off of. Facebook used to be cool because it was clean, slick, and not filled with garbage. Not anymore.
  • LayZ: I bring a lot more money (emphasis on "a lot") into PodTech than I spend so I doubt I'll need a parachute anytime soon. But thanks for caring!
  • Facebook does the filtering. I don't see 100% of what people do. I probably don't even see .01%.

    And, to Calacanis: I don't spend 30 minutes a day adding people. I do it on my cell phone. Today's adds took less than a minute.
  • Robert Dewey
    Jason has posted a response: http://www.calacanis.com/2007/07/28/social-netw...

    Now he's got jabs about Guy Kawasaki's 15 minutes of fame at Apple, LOL!

    Gotta admit, he does respond relatively quickly via e-mail, and his IM usernames are readily available.
  • Lazy
    well your strategy probably makes sense given PodTechs montlhy burn rate. You're gonna need that parachute.
  • Robert

    Until a few hours ago I was very much against the blackhole aka as Facebook and then I saw a chink of light.

    I found Facebook badges which enable me to place my facebook status and details into my blog (about us). I also can get my facebook photos in Wordpress.

    Now Facebook can be my lifestream app - aggregating all of my apps into one place. It can also replace my linkedin list.

    I am not saying Facebook is perfect but it has certainly become more useful.

    Sam
  • Just wondering, do you do a lot of filtering of your frineds' news feeds? With 4,000+ friends I would imagine that the signal to noise ratio must be pretty high if you're seeing 100% of everyone's news feeds.
  • Jason also closed comments on his blog, and addressed his readers in a pretty piss-poor manner.

    My favorite quotes:

    "I'm not going to turn comments on.... so stop asking."

    ...and...

    "It feels like the comments are a place for the same five wacky folks..."
blog comments powered by Disqus