You make a good point that the quality of the app also plays a role.

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.

Hmm, if it came across as "cohoots" then I apologize. What I thought happened was that Mike had beta access, that's all.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 :)

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.

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.

That sighting will do more for iPhone sales than Scoble sitting outside of the Palo Alto store.

story link

– having a geek celebrity fronting your outfit is worth its weight in *gold*. Cheers t @ dji

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

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.

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.

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… :-)