Episode #2: Interview with Jason Calacanis

On his recent trip to Australia, I caught up with Jason Calacanis, who previously founded the Silicon Alley Reporter and Weblogs Inc, and now the human powered search engine Mahalo.

In a wide ranging conversation, we chatted about Jason's often controversial use of social media as a platform for promotion, the future of search, how the best ideas are just waiting to be stolen from Asia, and the perils of working for big corporations.

One of the points that really struck me in our discussion was Jason's view that what he is trying to do with Mahalo is related to his previous venture Weblogs Inc. Except this time, rather than hundreds of blog writers organising news and relevant links to niche content areas, Mahalo would have potentially millions doing the same thing for search keyword terms.

It's not an entirely new idea. Although Jason didn't like to discuss it, Mahalo is chasing a very similar strategy to South Korea's dominant search engine, Naver. It would be an understatement to say that Naver has been successful in their home market. They have decimated Google in search market share. Let's see if it works in the West.