Mahalo Incorporates the Social Graph; Calacanis Video From LeWeb

Today we learned that Mahalo has added a social profile component to their system. Search Engine Land has a very lengthy overview of the features, but let me try to explain it in twitter-like style. You can add a profile with your social networks, and see your submitted links. And you can invite friends to Mahalo. That’s it.

Jason explains the new features as, "layering the social graph on top of search". Mike Arrington noted, "Today, they are adding user profiles and other social networking features to further incentivize users to submit quality content." I asked in the comments how this "incentivizes" anyone to leave more links – wouldn’t a forced login process cause less content to be submitted? The link I submitted to Mahalo is displayed on the page, about 4-5 full scrolls down. But it hasn’t been approved by Mahalo. What incentive does that give me to submit more links? I’d suggest moving those to the top to, at a minimum, say thanks for the submission. And would the average Internet user have a profile on Pownce or Twitter? I am not sold on what the benefit is to invite my friends to another profile generator. Can anyone help me understand some benefits to forwarding the profile creator to my friends?

Mike also notes that Mahalo traffic is up big which is great news for such a new startup. I’d just put an * there that shows the Alexa chart and who’s actually using the service. 60% of traffic appears to be employee traffic. Not taking anything away from the great growth curve displayed by comScore. (and yes, I know Alexa is the suck, but it shows a breakdown of where the traffic is coming from). Interesting note, "vanessa hudgens nude" is the most popular search term driver to Mahalo from Google reports Compete. I’d wonder what percentage of traffic comes from blogger mentions and Google vs. home-grown organic traffic.

I’ve written before about why the Community CEO doesn’t work and posted Jason’s response of why it does work. Today, it’s important to note that it’s not only community ceo, it’s also now unpaid community site growth with the belief that people will submit links to better the search engine to then help me back on future searches. I am not sure I’d take that bet but with their goal of hitting the mainstream, it may work.

Jason is a very smart marketer. I’ve said this several times before. We know this by the way he releases items in timing/depth on Mahalo and to whom he hangs with to drive traffic. I certainly can’t fault him for this.

In the video presentation below from LeWeb, Jason attacks Seth Godin for not policing Squidoo and Dave Sifty for the spam on Technorati. He then calls Ted Murphy an "idiot" and notes he is "not being so bright" with his PayPerPost product. Jason also notes in his discussion that we should use RSS subscribers as a metric for who’s an authority. I sure hope he is kidding on this last claim.

Here’s the video from his speech at LeWeb: