10 ms·

Mahalo 4.0: All about learning

31 points by thesethings 16y ago

jonknee 16y ago
I think they see the "content mill penalty" writing on the wall and are pivoting to spamming YouTube in advance.
- thesethings 16y ago
  Hadn't considered that. Can you expand a bit? I'm really into YouTube and would love to hear your theories. I think it is a little harder to spam YouTube (with content) than the web. On the web, you can just parse feeds/spin text. On Youtube, you have to upload things. According to the presentation, they built out studios and are recording videos at a fast pace (and they do have thousands of videos on their channel, all with a signature white negative space backdrop). It is totally possible to make bad videos, not denying that. But it's a bit harder to trick systems into thinking there's something there that's not/misdirect. Not saying there aren't other places in the system to abuse stuff (On YouTube you can friend spam, Fave-spam, etc), but it's hard to do with content. Were you thinking content spam?
  - jonknee 16y ago
    Instead of low-quality articles meant to get search traffic and AdSense revenue, these are low-quality videos meant to get search traffic and AdSense revenues. YouTube is the second largest search engine and also has a lot of space in Google SERPs. It's also almost identical to Videojug, if you want to see how something like this plays out.
    - jasonmcalacanis 16y ago
      Our videos cost hundreds of dollars to make, are hosted by experts, shot in 1080p HD in a studio, have perfect audio and are on super clean white backgrounds (typically). They are 10-50x better than most of the videos on YT in terms of quality and production value. Most videos on YT don't have an expert and are shot on flipcams or iPhones with an open microphone, no lighting and background noise. Our goal is to make HIGH-QUALITY videos that help people learn. If we do that we will be one of the top 25 sites in the US..... inside of three years.
      - jonknee 16y ago
        You claim to be shooting for 500,000 videos in the next couple of years. There's no way that each cost hundreds of dollars (just $100 would make it $50M) and are all expertly made / edited. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/01/25/businessinsider-mahalo-4-2011-1.DTL http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/01/25/... "The goal this year is to start creating (from scratch) 2,500 original videos per week in 4 studios at Mahalo's L.A. headquarters. And Calacanis says the goal over the next couple of years is to reach 500,000 original videos." That's 625 "professional" videos per studio per week. Sorry Jason, I don't buy it.
- robryan 16y ago
  The ads seem to be way down, maybe they are trying not to look like a content mill while there is a heap of Google attention on the issue.
  - thesethings 16y ago
    You are totally right about the ads being down. That's why it's so unfortunate/confusing that the how-to pages still feel cluttered. Visual clutter on sites like this are often just to make places for ads that "blend" in with content. But the new Mahalo has few ads. As I wrote in my post: there are multiple sections of interesting information... presented in a disorienting manner. I feel like the new learning mission is sincere, but am waiting for more tweaking.
- infocaptor 16y ago
  You are right, Google is gearing to change its algorithm to start penalize pages instead of sites. Good sites with few bad pages will see that not all their pages are ranked. Whereas bad sites with few good pages will see that only their good pages are bringing traffic. So maybe this could be a nice motivation for bad sites to add more good pages.
- jasonmcalacanis 16y ago
  Well, we never made low-quality content like Demand Media, but you are right that making high-quality videos with EXPERTS in them keeps us out of trouble with search engines. Google will solve the ehow/demand media problem this year--or consumers will by blocking specific sites. When that happens Mahalo's traffic should actually go up, because there won't be people with 11-year old spamming domains standing between us and teh top 10 results! good observation!
sharescribe 16y ago
Looking forward to Mahalo 5.0 and their next pivot.
- gspyrou 16y ago
  This should be code-named Hawaii Five-O .
- jasonmcalacanis 16y ago
  cynical
  - gspyrou 16y ago
    Since you are focused mainly on video you could check Impossible Software , their demo in DLD 2011 was quite impressive . http://www.dld-conference.com/articles/article/dld11-live_aid_2186.html http://www.dld-conference.com/articles/article/dld11-live_ai...
pointillistic 16y ago
4.0 as in four steps ahead of Google in the art of spam.
- jasonmcalacanis 16y ago
  lame. cynical.
pclark 16y ago
If Mahalo has been such a loved product with versions 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 why are they basically scrapping all of it and releasing a new product? It must be hilarious being an investor and seeing entrepreneurs pitch so confidently with ideas and then the next week see them something almost entirely different and totally confident in that. Oh right if you pivot it's okay.
- pygy_ 16y ago
  Why do they cling to that brand? I've only heard about it here, and the opinions were unanimously negative. I'm sure I'm not in their target demographics, though. Who do they appeal to?
  - ebaysucks 16y ago
    The 99% of the population who is less internet savvy than you.
- lenley 16y ago
  They haven't scraped it at all, they've just evolved the product a bit. I think the new designation is more showmanship then "pivot"
- RBr 16y ago
  I wondered about this exact same thing and wrote in length about it this morning: http://robisit.com/mahalo-version-4/ http://robisit.com/mahalo-version-4/ "If you remove the video revenue sharing scheme from Mahalo 4, you’re left with a ballooning group of in-house staff members that are creating content. Mahalo version 1 started exactly the same way. Large groups of people were hired in-house to generate written articles and cull popular hyperlinks. Shortly thereafter, Mahalo 2 relied on offshore outsourcing and then inexpensive remote American labor to mill content. When thought of in this light with a view of Mahalo’s history, it starts to become clear that Mahalo 4 is an iteration that has already occurred. Mahalo is iterating over itself. Partly due to the fact that they have enough money to do so, partly because the revolving door of staff members hasn’t experienced previous iterations and partly because online video is simply making money for content companies at the moment."
replicatorblog 16y ago
I think it's a really smart idea. How-to content is huge. Amateur videos of esoteric hobbies can get a quarter million page views in a couple months. I think the biggest risk they are running is trying to produce in super high volumes. I think this will lead to less compelling content. At first they can make it up in volume, but if they have success it will be relatively easy for domain experts to copy their approach and produce relatively fewer videos, tailored to the field, which will lead to higher CPMs. The other big opportunity is using video as a gateway to ecommerce. QVC is the 2nd highest grossing tv station. There is definitely an opportunity to take this model to the web.
infocaptor 16y ago
I guess this is in direct response to Matt Cutts openly pointing Mahalo on HN. We should make the Aaron Wall the real SEO police. Just read the seobook blog and you will see all the sneaky things sites like Mahalo and ehow does.
- jasonmcalacanis 16y ago
  Lame. Slander. Please read HN community standards.
- ebaysucks 16y ago
  Could you please list a few things they do?
blackysky 16y ago
I was ready to say mahalo was the biggest spam website on the internet last week after the whole google search debate but now I think mahalo may have a killer product. right now it's like wikipedia 2.0 .... so far I like the 4.0 version ...maybe I'm wrong but I like this pivot
- jasonmcalacanis 16y ago
  Thanks for a considered response. May I offer you a complimentary ticket to the LAUNCH Conference as a thank you? Feb. 23/24th in San Francisco. Ping me at jason@launch.is and i will arrange. it's going to be a killer event (see www.launch.is for details... 40 companies launching killer products over two days!).
  - ungerik 16y ago
    Mahalo 4.0 is great! Please send my ticket to ... ;-)
Maro 16y ago
Does anybody here use Mahalo? What are some use-cases where it makes sense? EDIT: So I checked out the new Mahalo's advertised feature, "How to Convert Fractions": http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-convert-fractions/ http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-convert-fractions/ They have a video which is pretty good. (I wonder if creating hi-quality videos scales to satisfy investors?) Then they have the steps in the video in text format with words such as "Fraction" hyperlinked to a spammy Mahalo page: http://mahalo.com/fraction http://mahalo.com/fraction Below this content they have "Related" stuff like "How to convert fractions - XXX" where XXX = {Videos, Images, Newsfeed, Twitter}. These are {Google, Bing, Twitter, etc} auto-generated spam/noise and contain no useful information. (You can't auto-generate a sensible feed about converting fractions.) Overall I'd rate the new mahalo.com as spammy. The videos + transcribed text may be good, but there's too much surrounding crap.
- MikeCapone 16y ago
  I was going to ask the same question because the only times I ever hear about Mahalo is from people who complain about how they are spamming. Haven't heard from a single user of the service yet.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- jasonmcalacanis 16y ago
  The spamming claim on HN is one done by a secret kabbel of SEO's who I've pissed off over the years. These guys basically obsesses over everything I do and follow me around the social web. They vote my stuff down, flame me and generally try to bust my chops. They are known as "jayters" because they hate on Jason. I love my jayters, because they make me appreciate how lucky I've been in this life. They have every reason to hate on me: I drive a tesla, I have not one but TWO bulldogs and I get more press they anyone deserves. Hate on!!
  - Maro 16y ago
    Hi. I've never seen mahalo.com before nor have I commented on it. What I wrote down was my first impression as a user. Also note that I pointed out the positive: "They have a video which is pretty good." But all the auto-generated stuff surrounding it is noise to me. Best of luck with mahalo.com.
alexophile 16y ago
A fun side-story: There was a question on Quora recently - "Why did Duck Duck Go Block Mahalo.com?" and Jason Calacanis, of course, felt it necessary to weigh in. I had to read this response twice, assuming there was some intended irony: "if they did that is a big mistake... we are not close to spam and a we have the best articles on many things like how to play guitar, speak french, etc." http://www.quora.com/Why-did-DuckDuckGo-block-Mahalo-com http://www.quora.com/Why-did-DuckDuckGo-block-Mahalo-com
shareme 16y ago
The problem with all these pivots is that Jason never addresses the real problem looking for a solution: The Problem: How do you couple an ad based funding model to user generated content without having that content model destroyed by ads displayed not in content of content and ads and ad frequency not fitting with user generated content. Thee is the problem Jason and you still have not solved go back to the drawing board! And to be fair I do not know if there is solution to the problem with a non-volunteer human infrastructure...maybe there is not one.
- rythie 16y ago
  Make lessons 1-10 free (20-30mins each), charge for lessons 11 onwards. Most people that make it to lesson 11 would be willing to pay going forward, after seeing the quality of lessons 1-10.
  - jasonmcalacanis 16y ago
    Thank you for a great insight. Would love to have your intelligence at the @LAUNCH conference. please ping me jason@launch.is and i will arrange.
prosa 16y ago
I know the HN community has mixed feelings (at best) about Mahalo, but definitely watch the video! When I saw Mahalo in the title I almost skipped the article completely, but Jason provides a solid dissection of his company's evolution and the strategic mistakes they've made so far. (Plus it's pretty short.) (Skip the Mahalo promo at the end.)
- jasonmcalacanis 16y ago
  Thank you for actually listening. :-) I would like to offer you a complimentary ticket to the LAUNCH Conference as a thank you. Feb. 23/24th in San Francisco. Ping me at jason@launch.is and i will arrange.
staunch 16y ago
Instead of How To Pages they're going to concentrate on How To Videos. Not all that much of a pivot IMHO. Pros: + It should be more popular than user-generated content of the same type (overall). + Very few other companies would be willing to invest as much time and money into competing. How To pages are much much cheaper. + High CPMs if they can build a trusted brand with quality viewership. + There's less competition for video content than text content, and it's harder to steal (no synonym substitutions, etc). Cons: + Hugely expensive. Low profit margins. + Very slow to generate. + Far less video views than page views (less ad impressions). Many on YouTube itself. + Hard to manage and keep quality at large scale. + Very small buyer market for high CPM video ads. Low click through.

31 points by thesethings 16y ago

jonknee 16y ago

I think they see the "content mill penalty" writing on the wall and are pivoting to spamming YouTube in advance.

thesethings 16y ago
Hadn't considered that. Can you expand a bit? I'm really into YouTube and would love to hear your theories. I think it is a little harder to spam YouTube (with content) than the web. On the web, you can just parse feeds/spin text. On Youtube, you have to upload things. According to the presentation, they built out studios and are recording videos at a fast pace (and they do have thousands of videos on their channel, all with a signature white negative space backdrop). It is totally possible to make bad videos, not denying that. But it's a bit harder to trick systems into thinking there's something there that's not/misdirect. Not saying there aren't other places in the system to abuse stuff (On YouTube you can friend spam, Fave-spam, etc), but it's hard to do with content. Were you thinking content spam?
- jonknee 16y ago
  Instead of low-quality articles meant to get search traffic and AdSense revenue, these are low-quality videos meant to get search traffic and AdSense revenues. YouTube is the second largest search engine and also has a lot of space in Google SERPs. It's also almost identical to Videojug, if you want to see how something like this plays out.
  - jasonmcalacanis 16y ago
    Our videos cost hundreds of dollars to make, are hosted by experts, shot in 1080p HD in a studio, have perfect audio and are on super clean white backgrounds (typically). They are 10-50x better than most of the videos on YT in terms of quality and production value. Most videos on YT don't have an expert and are shot on flipcams or iPhones with an open microphone, no lighting and background noise. Our goal is to make HIGH-QUALITY videos that help people learn. If we do that we will be one of the top 25 sites in the US..... inside of three years.
    - jonknee 16y ago
      You claim to be shooting for 500,000 videos in the next couple of years. There's no way that each cost hundreds of dollars (just $100 would make it $50M) and are all expertly made / edited. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/01/25/businessinsider-mahalo-4-2011-1.DTL http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/01/25/... "The goal this year is to start creating (from scratch) 2,500 original videos per week in 4 studios at Mahalo's L.A. headquarters. And Calacanis says the goal over the next couple of years is to reach 500,000 original videos." That's 625 "professional" videos per studio per week. Sorry Jason, I don't buy it.
robryan 16y ago
The ads seem to be way down, maybe they are trying not to look like a content mill while there is a heap of Google attention on the issue.
- thesethings 16y ago
  You are totally right about the ads being down. That's why it's so unfortunate/confusing that the how-to pages still feel cluttered. Visual clutter on sites like this are often just to make places for ads that "blend" in with content. But the new Mahalo has few ads. As I wrote in my post: there are multiple sections of interesting information... presented in a disorienting manner. I feel like the new learning mission is sincere, but am waiting for more tweaking.
infocaptor 16y ago
You are right, Google is gearing to change its algorithm to start penalize pages instead of sites. Good sites with few bad pages will see that not all their pages are ranked. Whereas bad sites with few good pages will see that only their good pages are bringing traffic. So maybe this could be a nice motivation for bad sites to add more good pages.
jasonmcalacanis 16y ago
Well, we never made low-quality content like Demand Media, but you are right that making high-quality videos with EXPERTS in them keeps us out of trouble with search engines. Google will solve the ehow/demand media problem this year--or consumers will by blocking specific sites. When that happens Mahalo's traffic should actually go up, because there won't be people with 11-year old spamming domains standing between us and teh top 10 results! good observation!

sharescribe 16y ago

Looking forward to Mahalo 5.0 and their next pivot.

gspyrou 16y ago
This should be code-named Hawaii Five-O .
jasonmcalacanis 16y ago
cynical
- gspyrou 16y ago
  Since you are focused mainly on video you could check Impossible Software , their demo in DLD 2011 was quite impressive . http://www.dld-conference.com/articles/article/dld11-live_aid_2186.html http://www.dld-conference.com/articles/article/dld11-live_ai...

pointillistic 16y ago

4.0 as in four steps ahead of Google in the art of spam.

jasonmcalacanis 16y ago
lame. cynical.

pclark 16y ago

If Mahalo has been such a loved product with versions 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 why are they basically scrapping all of it and releasing a new product? It must be hilarious being an investor and seeing entrepreneurs pitch so confidently with ideas and then the next week see them something almost entirely different and totally confident in that. Oh right if you pivot it's okay.

pygy_ 16y ago
Why do they cling to that brand? I've only heard about it here, and the opinions were unanimously negative. I'm sure I'm not in their target demographics, though. Who do they appeal to?
- ebaysucks 16y ago
  The 99% of the population who is less internet savvy than you.
lenley 16y ago
They haven't scraped it at all, they've just evolved the product a bit. I think the new designation is more showmanship then "pivot"
RBr 16y ago
I wondered about this exact same thing and wrote in length about it this morning: http://robisit.com/mahalo-version-4/ http://robisit.com/mahalo-version-4/ "If you remove the video revenue sharing scheme from Mahalo 4, you’re left with a ballooning group of in-house staff members that are creating content. Mahalo version 1 started exactly the same way. Large groups of people were hired in-house to generate written articles and cull popular hyperlinks. Shortly thereafter, Mahalo 2 relied on offshore outsourcing and then inexpensive remote American labor to mill content. When thought of in this light with a view of Mahalo’s history, it starts to become clear that Mahalo 4 is an iteration that has already occurred. Mahalo is iterating over itself. Partly due to the fact that they have enough money to do so, partly because the revolving door of staff members hasn’t experienced previous iterations and partly because online video is simply making money for content companies at the moment."

replicatorblog 16y ago

I think it's a really smart idea. How-to content is huge. Amateur videos of esoteric hobbies can get a quarter million page views in a couple months. I think the biggest risk they are running is trying to produce in super high volumes. I think this will lead to less compelling content. At first they can make it up in volume, but if they have success it will be relatively easy for domain experts to copy their approach and produce relatively fewer videos, tailored to the field, which will lead to higher CPMs. The other big opportunity is using video as a gateway to ecommerce. QVC is the 2nd highest grossing tv station. There is definitely an opportunity to take this model to the web.

infocaptor 16y ago

I guess this is in direct response to Matt Cutts openly pointing Mahalo on HN. We should make the Aaron Wall the real SEO police. Just read the seobook blog and you will see all the sneaky things sites like Mahalo and ehow does.

jasonmcalacanis 16y ago
Lame. Slander. Please read HN community standards.
ebaysucks 16y ago
Could you please list a few things they do?

blackysky 16y ago

I was ready to say mahalo was the biggest spam website on the internet last week after the whole google search debate but now I think mahalo may have a killer product. right now it's like wikipedia 2.0 .... so far I like the 4.0 version ...maybe I'm wrong but I like this pivot

jasonmcalacanis 16y ago
Thanks for a considered response. May I offer you a complimentary ticket to the LAUNCH Conference as a thank you? Feb. 23/24th in San Francisco. Ping me at jason@launch.is and i will arrange. it's going to be a killer event (see www.launch.is for details... 40 companies launching killer products over two days!).
- ungerik 16y ago
  Mahalo 4.0 is great! Please send my ticket to ... ;-)

Maro 16y ago

Does anybody here use Mahalo? What are some use-cases where it makes sense? EDIT: So I checked out the new Mahalo's advertised feature, "How to Convert Fractions": http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-convert-fractions/ http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-convert-fractions/ They have a video which is pretty good. (I wonder if creating hi-quality videos scales to satisfy investors?) Then they have the steps in the video in text format with words such as "Fraction" hyperlinked to a spammy Mahalo page: http://mahalo.com/fraction http://mahalo.com/fraction Below this content they have "Related" stuff like "How to convert fractions - XXX" where XXX = {Videos, Images, Newsfeed, Twitter}. These are {Google, Bing, Twitter, etc} auto-generated spam/noise and contain no useful information. (You can't auto-generate a sensible feed about converting fractions.) Overall I'd rate the new mahalo.com as spammy. The videos + transcribed text may be good, but there's too much surrounding crap.

MikeCapone 16y ago
I was going to ask the same question because the only times I ever hear about Mahalo is from people who complain about how they are spamming. Haven't heard from a single user of the service yet.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
jasonmcalacanis 16y ago
The spamming claim on HN is one done by a secret kabbel of SEO's who I've pissed off over the years. These guys basically obsesses over everything I do and follow me around the social web. They vote my stuff down, flame me and generally try to bust my chops. They are known as "jayters" because they hate on Jason. I love my jayters, because they make me appreciate how lucky I've been in this life. They have every reason to hate on me: I drive a tesla, I have not one but TWO bulldogs and I get more press they anyone deserves. Hate on!!
- Maro 16y ago
  Hi. I've never seen mahalo.com before nor have I commented on it. What I wrote down was my first impression as a user. Also note that I pointed out the positive: "They have a video which is pretty good." But all the auto-generated stuff surrounding it is noise to me. Best of luck with mahalo.com.

alexophile 16y ago

A fun side-story: There was a question on Quora recently - "Why did Duck Duck Go Block Mahalo.com?" and Jason Calacanis, of course, felt it necessary to weigh in. I had to read this response twice, assuming there was some intended irony: "if they did that is a big mistake... we are not close to spam and a we have the best articles on many things like how to play guitar, speak french, etc." http://www.quora.com/Why-did-DuckDuckGo-block-Mahalo-com http://www.quora.com/Why-did-DuckDuckGo-block-Mahalo-com

shareme 16y ago

The problem with all these pivots is that Jason never addresses the real problem looking for a solution: The Problem: How do you couple an ad based funding model to user generated content without having that content model destroyed by ads displayed not in content of content and ads and ad frequency not fitting with user generated content. Thee is the problem Jason and you still have not solved go back to the drawing board! And to be fair I do not know if there is solution to the problem with a non-volunteer human infrastructure...maybe there is not one.

rythie 16y ago
Make lessons 1-10 free (20-30mins each), charge for lessons 11 onwards. Most people that make it to lesson 11 would be willing to pay going forward, after seeing the quality of lessons 1-10.
- jasonmcalacanis 16y ago
  Thank you for a great insight. Would love to have your intelligence at the @LAUNCH conference. please ping me jason@launch.is and i will arrange.

prosa 16y ago

I know the HN community has mixed feelings (at best) about Mahalo, but definitely watch the video! When I saw Mahalo in the title I almost skipped the article completely, but Jason provides a solid dissection of his company's evolution and the strategic mistakes they've made so far. (Plus it's pretty short.) (Skip the Mahalo promo at the end.)

jasonmcalacanis 16y ago
Thank you for actually listening. :-) I would like to offer you a complimentary ticket to the LAUNCH Conference as a thank you. Feb. 23/24th in San Francisco. Ping me at jason@launch.is and i will arrange.

staunch 16y ago

Instead of How To Pages they're going to concentrate on How To Videos. Not all that much of a pivot IMHO. Pros: + It should be more popular than user-generated content of the same type (overall). + Very few other companies would be willing to invest as much time and money into competing. How To pages are much much cheaper. + High CPMs if they can build a trusted brand with quality viewership. + There's less competition for video content than text content, and it's harder to steal (no synonym substitutions, etc). Cons: + Hugely expensive. Low profit margins. + Very slow to generate. + Far less video views than page views (less ad impressions). Many on YouTube itself. + Hard to manage and keep quality at large scale. + Very small buyer market for high CPM video ads. Low click through.