Vallewag: What would you think of Jon Miller going to Yahoo?

Calacanis:

Jon Miller would be amazing for Yahoo because he is extremely good at building display advertising businesses and buying young startups. Remember, when they let him go he was coming off back to back 40%+ gain quarters in advertising revenue—second only to Google (and well ahead of Yahoo). His biggest strength at AOL—in my mind—was buying promising startups and giving them tons of support, no red tape, and breathing room. Yahoo needs new blood and a focus on display advertising, with Ross [Levinsohn, former CEO of Fox Interactive and Miller's partner at VC firm Velocity Interactive] at his side you would have a very potent operator and M&A team.

Yahoo's best strategy right now is probably to build display advertising while buying and growing promising startups. Yahoo needs growth, Jon and Ross are growth guys (i.e. MySpace, Advertising.com, Weblogs, Inc, etc). As a bonus you have hundreds of VP/SVP/EVP level executives out there who are loyal to Jon and Ross, so you might see a talent influx with them at the helm, and talent wins.

Valleywag: You think he'd take the job?

Calacanis:

• Pro: It is the most challenging job in the space second to AOL
• Pro: Having reinvented AOL this would be cake walk/much more pleasant.
• Push: It would require a move from East to West coast—which is both a + and -
• Pro: It would be a great way to show the folks at [Time Warner] who's the man

I'd say if he gets the call he would most likely take it... big opps like this come along once every 5-10 years.

I need more dinners out with Jason Calacanis, rarely do you see a successful entrepreneur with such balance in all aspects of his life.

Just idle speculation, granted. Calacanis may have proper balance in his life, but the workaholism he demands of employees is another matter. We know for a fact that Sean Percival, an early Mahalo employee, has moved over to startup DocStoc.

They're doing what everyone else is doing, throwing their inventory into a big pile and asking someone else to do the work in return for a large cut of the revenues. Jon Cohen and Rob Stone, principals of New York-based Cornerstone Promotion, have created an ad network for the very purpose. We're not surprised many follow this path. It's easy and allows publishers to focus on creating content — which is probably more fun than selling ads. We would be surprised if RCRD LBL's Rojas joins up. His blogfather, Weblogs Inc. founder Jason Calacanis, is a known proponent of going with internal ad sales teams over ad networks, which he describes as "short term and very damaging." Indeed, Fortune reports Rojas is rumored to be going the smart way: releasing a major artist's latest album, sponsored by a single advertiser.

Even at rates more typical of outsourced workers in Asia, applicants are expected to be versed in "online research, journalism, and wiki markup language." While costs have gone up in the last five years, the Calacanis payscale hasn't significantly — new Weblogs Inc. bloggers typically made $500 for 125 posts a month back in 2005. But with unemployment on the rise, expect there to be plenty of interest. And hey, at least Mahalo's paying, which is more than Jimmy Wales can say for the contributors to Wikipedia.

When we wrote up our list of tech's 10 worst entry-level jobs, we figured Cashmore will pay his assistant around $55,000 per year. But since, we've learned that number is well high of the mark. Readers figured Cashmore will pay $51,000 per year. We've heard Mahalo pays guides between $30,000 and $35,000 per year, but commenters on our original post told us we got it wrong. Wrote Richeem:

Figuring Mahalo's current pricing for the average page, wait time for acceptance, and any other factors a "good" ptg would be lucky to make $50/day. I highly doubt they are accepting more than 5 pages per day per ptg! Specially given the fact they have 120+ pages pending review.

Readers later guessed $32,000 per year.

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In our last matchup, working as a Microsoft Windows support professional handily trounced the Yahoo finance internship in our last matchup, 59 percent to 41 percent.

1. Mozilla
2. Facebook
3. Mahalo
4. DoubleClick
5. Yahoo
6. Microsoft
7. Google
8. LinkedIn
9. Jajah
10. Adobe

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• Tech's 10 worst workspaces
• Yahoo
• Mozilla
• Mahalo
• Google
• Microsoft
• LinkedIn
• Jajah
• Facebook
• DoubleClick
• Adobe

Previously:

• A is for Adelson, who cofounded Digg

• Don't say anything that might just as well be said in an email, i.e. "I'm sorry Steve, it's going to have to be $37."
• Don't forget how many people are listening. For example, do not say: "Oops, hope nobody notices the smell."
• Don't follow people you've never met. Exception: Diablo Cody.
• Don't follow Jason Calacanis.
• Don't add too many followers too fast. Like any dangerous recreational narcotic, one has to build one's tolerance before ignoring the Surgeon General's warnings.
• Don't expect timely and informative responses to your Twittered queries. Or for anyone to read them. Twitter is a heat sink for the unexpressed ego.
• Don't Twitter things that would be better said in person. Example: "@George, No, I won't marry you. It's the halitosis."
• Don't try to share your political, religious or business views in 140 characters. It takes more words to obfuscate how simple and derivative they are.
• Don't follow Robert Scoble.
• Don't follow bloggers who write about Twitter just to have an excuse to include a link to their Twitter account. They will bombard you with links to their blog posts, because they are paid by pageviews.

It would be silly to just delete this account I have here, especially if there is someone out there that had like interests and had something to say or wanted to get involved in some relevant conversations.

No, it's to leverage Twitter's potential as a generator of links which increase websites' ranking in Google's search results. The good news for heavy Twitter users is that this sets the price of followers at around a dollar each. Maybe following every single account that adds you, spammer or otherwise, isn't such a bad idea after all. The only reason top Twitter user Jason Calacanis isn't selling his account? He's already using it for spam that promotes his business. (Photo by Dummycast.com's JA Donnelly)

She totally blew the screen test for Big Brother today. She choked, and they had her re-shoot. She may still have a shot, since the casting guys were interested in her 10k followers. Seriously though, I think she's a lost cause for Mahalo Daily.

Our tipster thinks Digg founder Kevin Rose's ex-girlfriend Posh Suicide of SuicideGirls has the inside track. Suicide certainly has a camera presence, but can she handle interviews? Judging from the above clip excerpted from her guest appearance on Gametrailers.com, it seems Suicide might have a hard time replacing the goofy but smart and quick-quipped Belmont. But perhaps that's not what Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis is after. Say, does that casting couch feel warm to you?

Calacanis is likely to dismiss the revenue figures with some handwaving about "ramping up sales." Let's look at the traffic figures instead: When a visitor generates an average of two pageviews a month, that tells you Mahalo's not a destination for anyone. It's a search-engine optimization play, exactly the kind of "spam" operation Calacanis has railed against.

• Demofall runs September 7-9 in San Diego, Sunday through Tuesday.
• TechCrunch50 runs September 8-10 in San Francisco, Monday through Wednesday.
• Demofall showcases new products. TechCrunch50 requires that the entire company be a new launch.
• Both events try to keep their lists of presenters a secret until close to showtime.
• Demofall requires that exhibitors not participate in any other shows. Companies chosen to exhibit at both shows will be forced to pick one.
• Job-avoiding members of The 250 will surely attend both. But most attendees and many journalists will be forced to choose either Demo or TechCrunch, and to skip the other entirely. Note: This is where the fun starts.
• Demofall is a less-prestigious spinoff of the bigger Demo show held in January in Palm Desert, California. It was originally called Demomobile, but there wasn't enough mobile to demo. It's not all-out war until TechCrunch goes head-to-head with the January Demo.
• Demo's organizers spell it DEMO, but it's not an acronym, so Owen makes me spell it Demo. I'm not sure why TechCrunch isn't Techcrunch by that rule. But I'm glad Valleywag isn't ValleyWag.
• Arrington told VentureBeat that the schedule conflict wasn't intentional. It was, he said, the only time they could get the venue they really wanted. This is the difference between a journalist and a publicist.
• Calacanis has been much more blunt about his desire to "take the payola out of Demo" by hosting a similar event that doesn't charge demonstrators a fee. It's currently $18,500 per company to appear at Demo, free at TechCrunch50. PR people I talked to believe $18,500 is a fair price for the exposure Demo gives a new product or company. But many of the shoestring Web 2.0 firms TechCrunch tracks simply don't have it.
• UPDATE: New improved quotes.
  • Arrington: "Demo needs to die."
  • Calacanis: "Chris Shipley, you moved your event to compete with us."
  • Shipley: "It baffles me, because ultimately it's not very good for entrepreneurs. It doesn't make sense how this will help them."
• If she's so concerned for the entrepreneurs, why not let them do both shows? That seems easier.

Jason Calacanis's loss is Engadget blogger Ryan Block's gain. Belmont's commute left boyfriend Block with nothing to keep him happy but his shiny, shiny gadgets.

(Photo of Belmont and Block by b_d_solis, video by Andy Sternberg)

(Photo of Taurus by Jason Calacanis. Gratuitous link to Mahalo by Paul Boutin.)

When people come to the site, I think its it's probably 80 percent the use case of Wikipedia and 80 percent the use case of a traditional search engine like Yahoo or Google.

I try to scare people in the interview. It's basically my technique. I tell them this is going to be hard. You're going to suffer, but we're going to make great stuff. I try to create an entity where people who are not passionate get expelled by the system.

Ad networks create conflicts: many people selling your inventory, confusing advertisers. They run ads that people hate. You cannot build a publishing business on the backs of ad networks. They take too much money, 40-50 percent. Your internal sales group will cost 10-25 percent. Under $250,000 a year in advertising? Go for it. Break $250,000, go for an ad sales person. If you are midsized, hire three advertising people. Spend 50 percent of your time going to advertising meetings. Kick out ad networks and replace with something simple like Google AdSense as backfill. Ad networks intimidate small publishers into thinking they can't sell their own inventory — NOT TRUE! All you need is one out of 25 advertisers to say yes.