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Silicon Valley Star face-off: Kevin Rose vs. Jason Calacanis vs. Guy
Over the past month three Silicon Valley celebs have launched their respective services. Guy Kawasaki launched Truemors, Jason Calacanis launched Mahalo and most recently Kevin Rose launched Pownce. I thought it would be interesting to rate their ability to generate buzz and therefore traffic. There is no doubt that these startups would never have received the coverage they did if a non SV celeb launched them.
Guy Kawasaki – Truemors
Guy was first out of the gate with Truemors and Guy worked his connections to get some initial buzz. Checking Alexa you can see a huge spike on the day of launch. TechMeme shows a dozen or so sites who wrote about the launch including TechCrunch. I assume Guy approached Mike as Mike had an pre-launch post about getting in on the private beta. Compared to the other two below, Guy did the worst job of working his buzz power.
Truemors quickly became a joke across the blogosphere when his system immediately became overrun with spam. He then began to remove mass posts which called the site's credibility into question. The system was hacked in hours making it even more of a joke. In fact, in several conversations I had that first evening, many people I chatted with about Truemors thought it was a joke.
Another thing that I believe hurt Truemors after the initial buzz was Guy's post(s) about the cost to build Truemors. This type of post is great and very useful for other aspiring entrepreneurs but I would have saved it until at least 6-12 months after launch. Then you can demonstrate how great the app is today plus what it took to build. Instead it just came across as a cheaply built app with no QA.
Overall Grade: D+
Jason Calacanis – Mahalo
Jason apparently has the most overall "star power" among the three celebs listed. Jason received lots of press across the Internet when the Mahalo product launched. TechMeme shows a large number of posts led by Jason's TechCrunch20 partner. In addition, he has appeared in no less than 20 interviews including one on Al Jazeera. He was also able to get Kevin Rose to begin a Digg and as we all know any Digg Kevin submits goes front page. What's interesting about this is two of the initial comments on the digg. One comes from powerdigger Muhammad Saleem who states, "Very interesting to see that Kevin Rose would submit Mahalo (of Calacanis, ex-Netscape boss). We all know that Kevin-submitted means 100% FP. Is there something more going on here behind the scenes?" and the other from user BearOwned, "I submitted this first, but the Digg staff deleted it."
Looking at Alexa, Mahalo was a top site on day of launch, and has started to drop since but still appears out of whack. Of course I am a bit skeptical of his "real" ranking after his post last November in which he states how easy it is for him to "game Alexa."
Jason also used his CalacanisCast to bring in some of the "seo-haters" of Mahalo into a discussion. I would give the podcast a neutral rating overall but the generated buzz and links is a significant positive.
Overall I think Jason did an excellent job of working his connections. In addition, by moving the Greenhouse launch out a couple of weeks, this allowed him to get repeat buzz with his friends network. I am looking forward to meeting Jason one day as I think we can both learn something from each other.
Overall Grade: B+
Kevin Rose – Pownce
Kevin has the best tool possible to help Pownce grow. Digg has been Pownce Central since launch. If you search for home page stories about Pownce, there are currently 7 listed. While I want to believe that Pownce gets a special boost on Digg, my video review (the only one out there) was buried.
Kevin has mastered the art of creating "follower" apps. Digg is a follower app by nature and Revision3 also leverages Digg for traffic. Pownce also uses Digg for traffic but now Kevin has a new way to create followers. For example, Kevin posted that he dropped his iPhone on Pownce. Big freaking deal. Within minutes, 28 followers/friends posted replies. Kevin knows that people are interested in following his every move and Pownce gives him a great forum for the minute-by-minute following of his movement. I bet we will see 50-100 of his Pownce comments make the Digg home page within a two-month period.
I also believe Pownce helps Kevin get out of the youngster realm of Digg. So far I see an older, worker-type user on Pownce. I also see more women on Pownce. This is important for longevity and I am sure that Kevin realizes that as the Digg'ers get older, they are not going to be replaced by a new set of Digg'ers.
Interesting side note… Pownce has a Mahalo page. Is this some sort of payback for the Digg? I can't imagine Pownce is already a top 10,000 term. How many other startups which are live for years don't have a page but Pownce gets a page straight away? Is that my bias concern coming into play again?
Overall Grade: B+
Conclusion
Each of the three players used their contacts and their "star power" to light the fire. Now the challenge for each is to keep their startups "top of mind." Will the fire remain lit or will it slowly burn out? If I had to guess on which fire would be extenguished first, it would be Truemors. Of course all three startups have very deep pockets so I doubt any of them will go anytime soon. Here on CenterNetworks, we will focus on tips for the rest of us to succeed. No matter where you are from or if you aren't "known", your startup can be a success!
I wish all three much success with their apps and look forward to reading more about the updates as we move into the summer.
What a great article! You’re too tough on Guy :)
So the openid works eh? :)
You make a good point that the quality of the app also plays a role.
I don’t think Rose did much. He is the new Steve Jobs.
I really don’t understand why people love the guy all he did was come up with digg a festering hole for fanboys of the worst kind.
Jason did a better job in my opinon, I also think Guy didn’t do a bad job. It was never going to set the world a light but it was worth a punt and thats all it was an experiment.
yeah it worked, however openid on my site is not directing correctly :p
baby steps? :) email me the issue and I will look into it – I already am trying to make it show nice usernames – this http://blah won't work!
I will reply to each of your comments individually:
Hmm, if it came across as "cohoots" then I apologize. What I thought happened was that Mike had beta access, that's all.
Out of curiosity, what does "pretty successful" mean to you? All I was saying is that I can't imagine his ranking is that high and he made a big point of explaining how easy it was to game Alexa and even tried to get people to move his site up on that same post. And he didn't even post the results of his game.
Thanks, I did real most every comment. Digg'rs typically are followers so any negative comments at the beginning (esp. by powerdiggers) will typically move the herd in that fashion. Also, there is a bit of negativity left for Kevin from the hd-dvd fiasco. I would also say with the number of stories going up, including a Mashable invites thread, they don't hate it (or him) that much.
Fair point. So you are suggesting that a Pownce page was created because it will help people "get" to this new app which they might not otherwise know how to get to? Jason you should hire him, he is good at PR :)
Michael, name calling is not acceptable here, not to me or any of the CN readers. I am out there campaigning for those who don't live in BH90210. Why do you believe my bias concerns are for my own benefit? If I remember on the CalacanisCast I used an example with the iPhone in which Engadget was listed numerous times, the competitor (Gizmodo) listed once and my #1 rank cost article wasn't listed at all. And here I explain Pownce, a brand new site has a page when thousands of other startups (who didn't get a friend digg) don't have pages. To me that's bias. And I can provide other examples as well. My concerns are legitimate and sincere and if Jason's site continues to grow, the issue will grow as well. I am only talking about simple bias right now.
I seriously doubt Mike and Guy were in “cohoots” to give TechCrunch a beta look. All you had to do was ask Guy and he would have provided access, even I – a relatively unknown TechCrunch competitor, had beta access.
If I recall correctly, Mike didn’t have access but was sent screenshots and information by someone who did. That’s why he posted it all early, because he was unaware Guy had asked us not to.
The Mahalo launch has proven pretty successful and not due to any gaming on the Mahalo team – as Jason said, they’re all Firefox (and who, with half a brain cell, isn’t). The part-time guides may be influencing the rankings somewhat, as they are working on SERPS, but all of that work is done on a subdomain – I’m not sure how Alexa takes that into account.
As far as Pownce goes – a lot of digg uses aren’t excited about it and think Kevin’s bouncing out on them. Just read the comments on most of the Pownce articles.
When it comes to Pownce and Mahalo – Mahalo covers what is making news today. Pownce is new, therefore people will be searching for it more often. There’s no need to cover older web apps immediately because the majority of people know how to directly access them.
On a related note: I think your bias concern is nothing more than a selfish concern. I watched the CalacanisCast and you came off as nothing more than a whiner who complained CenterNetworks was nowhere to be found within Mahalo.
Either you are masking your own selfish desires under the banner of bias or you just suck at getting your thoughts across in a verbal manner. Either way – I left that podcast with a completely different opinion of you than before, when I was merely an RSS subscriber. At first, I thought your bias concerns were legitimate and sincere; now I just think it’s a witch hunt for your own benefit.
Good to hear you aren't gaming the system. You really do lump SEO people into every possible category you can. You should be nice to the SEO people since at the next big event, that's the table you will be placed at with Mahalo :)
We didn’t touch the Alexa chart (we’re all Firefox at our company and thus no Alexa influence for us). Also, we got a huge Safari/Firefox contingent right now so I think Alexa might be under counting us.
However, we have a lot of SEOs visiting the site in the early days so maybe that spiked it since SEOs are Alexa-crazy users?!
I can’t tell… :-)
Yep Web I read the piece. And Jason twittered the piece too :) Of course if we use the A*B, B*C = A*C theorem, he only got that buzz because of the previous buzz.
Allen, Mahalo, togheter with a bunch of other interesting start-up search engines like hakia.com, powerset.com, nosyjoe.com appeared last weekend on NYT :)
I guess it does also count as a buzz:)
here is the story’s URL:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/24/business/yourmoney/24digi.html (it does already require registration)
Yep, you are correct. Look at the iPhone. Today the big story is Lindsay Lohan using one (I guess they have att stores in rehab?). Now every young girl will want one.
That sighting will do more for iPhone sales than Scoble sitting outside of the Palo Alto store.
Good write up Allan. I've written about this a ton of times, and I can't help but come to the same conclusion:
story link
– having a geek celebrity fronting your outfit is worth its weight in *gold*. Cheers t @ dji
… before you covered this Allen.
Similarly to Tony, I had touched on this, called “Hype is a double edged sword”.
But, that comes with the terrain, having a track record is an asset and entrepreneurs cannot be blamed for using it:
http://www.watchmojo.com/web/blog/?p=1647