If Mahalo has been such a loved product with versions 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 why are they basically scrapping <i>all of it</i> and releasing a new product?<p>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.<p>Oh right if you <i>pivot</i> it's okay.
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.<p>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.
Does anybody here use Mahalo? What are some use-cases where it makes sense?<p>EDIT:<p>So I checked out the new Mahalo's advertised feature, "How to Convert Fractions":<p><a href="http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-convert-fractions/" rel="nofollow">http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-convert-fractions/</a><p>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:<p><a href="http://mahalo.com/fraction" rel="nofollow">http://mahalo.com/fraction</a><p>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.)<p>Overall I'd rate the new mahalo.com as spammy. The videos + transcribed text may be good, but there's too much surrounding crap.
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:<p><i>"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."</i><p><a href="http://www.quora.com/Why-did-DuckDuckGo-block-Mahalo-com" rel="nofollow">http://www.quora.com/Why-did-DuckDuckGo-block-Mahalo-com</a>
I know the HN community has mixed feelings (at best) about Mahalo, but definitely watch the video!<p>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.)<p>(Skip the Mahalo promo at the end.)
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
Instead of How To Pages they're going to concentrate on How To Videos. Not all that much of a pivot IMHO.<p>Pros:<p>+ It should be more popular than user-generated content of the same type (overall).<p>+ Very few other companies would be willing to invest as much time and money into competing. How To pages are much much cheaper.<p>+ High CPMs if they can build a trusted brand with quality viewership.<p>+ There's less competition for video content than text content, and it's harder to steal (no synonym substitutions, etc).<p>Cons:<p>+ Hugely expensive. Low profit margins.<p>+ Very slow to generate.<p>+ Far less video views than page views (less ad impressions). Many on YouTube itself.<p>+ Hard to manage and keep quality at large scale.<p>+ Very small buyer market for high CPM video ads. Low click through.
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.
The problem with all these pivots is that Jason never addresses the real problem looking for a solution:<p>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.<p>Thee is the problem Jason and you still have not solved go back to the drawing board!<p>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.