Jason Calacanis Says Adios to AOL

November 16th, 2006 at 12:34 pm

Miller fan?

Eric
http://breakoutperformance.blogspot.com

November 16th, 2006 at 12:50 pm

is he already tired of running a billion dollar company?

November 16th, 2006 at 12:57 pm

Ah, wouldn’t this affect Jason’s payout for weblogsinc?? I would imagine he’s supposed to be tied to AOL for a little while longer as part of the acquisition deal…. or is that period over?

November 16th, 2006 at 1:00 pm

“AOL is still around? Damn, next thing you know a plesiosaur will turn up off the coast of Florida.”

You mean Katherine Harris?

November 16th, 2006 at 1:23 pm

Jason Calacanis is a rock star in my book; here is a good interview from Venture Voice, it worth listening to if you are entrepreneur.

http://www.venturevoice.com/20......html#more

November 16th, 2006 at 1:56 pm

great news really. i can’t wait to see where he ends up, or rather what he ends up starting next.

November 16th, 2006 at 2:07 pm

Space, the final frontier.

November 16th, 2006 at 2:23 pm

Without Jason, what’s next for netscape?

November 16th, 2006 at 2:46 pm

Arsalan;

I believe it’s called full disclosure.

As for the 20x revenue - there’s nothing new there. They aren’t just buying the revenue, they are buying the name, the users, future potential, and entrance into “Web 2.0″.

My thoughts about Jason were negative at one point, but things have been cleared up. He tried his best at AOL/Netscape, so you can’t bash the guy.

November 16th, 2006 at 2:50 pm

Arsalan you’re an idiot…. if it’s off the record then Jason’s trusting Mike not to talk about it, which he’s obviously abiding by. There’s no ego-pumping, Jason said things to Mike he didn’t want published on TC and there’s nothing wrong with that.

From what I’ve read about the new head of AOL, he’s not a worthy replacement. Jon Miller was agile and fast-thinking, and the new CEO comes from a “big business” background that Google will now just rollover in stride. The goal is for a big company to act more like a little one, not the other way around, but obviously the board at AOL never got that memo.

November 16th, 2006 at 2:57 pm

Now we will see Dan Farber and Jason C joining TechCrunch to grow the network

November 16th, 2006 at 3:00 pm

Robert Dewey: you are out of your mind!

What in weblogs has:
1) a name? are there any brands there?
2) the users - show me critical mass via comscore or even alexa…the big 3 need scale to make material impact on revenue…come on! They have made nearly 0 incremental impact on revenue and have no prospects to in the next 1-2 years.
3) entrance into “Web 2.0″ - what does this even mean? you have got to stop eating your own dog food and chasing your long tail!

November 16th, 2006 at 3:16 pm

It took TW COO Jeff Bewkes to convice Jon Miller to let go of AOL subscriptions and trust a pure ad model. Don’t be surprised to see TW’s stock finally start to move upward. Jason is just a casualty of Miller more than likely.

November 16th, 2006 at 3:28 pm

concerning the “off the record” discussion, is it likely that Calacanis would say “nah, I’m staying with AOL” off the record to Mike and he then would make a post like this? My guess would be no. How much off the record is off the record….

November 16th, 2006 at 3:33 pm

Jason is an entrepreneur. It’s great to know that he’ll be starting his next project. His creative energy is still intact… He knows the models that work but he MAY decide to put his energy into building something a bit different… somethig that keeps score using some new metrics. It will be interesting to see what he does next.

I always felt his time at AOL would be limited to the timeframes of the acquisition contract. He’s just NOT a corporate politician… he’s way too
candid about his business dealings.

AOL hiring a TV guy is interesting as well… but hopefully, Jason will (after the dust settles) tell some of the inside stories from this power shift.

November 16th, 2006 at 3:47 pm

AOL? Netscape?

November 16th, 2006 at 4:07 pm

Damn. I hope this doesn’t mean I won’t be receiving my $1,000 check this month.

November 16th, 2006 at 4:45 pm

I remember Jason once told in the Gillmore gang that he would never give up. Even if he resigned from AOL, he will continue what he was pursuing somewhere else.

November 16th, 2006 at 5:29 pm

I DON’T BUY IT.

I know some of us are thinking the same thing here and that he was probably fired after they replaced the AOL CEO.

If he was truly fired, what did he have to do to opt for resigning rather then being fired.

MORE IMPORTANT, I wonder if this will end up being the hottest digg topic ever …

November 16th, 2006 at 5:36 pm

Hmmmmmmmmmmm:

Well, if he is going to quit or the best time for AOL to fire someone, I guess it would be prior to the event of TECHCRUNCH Nueva Yorka …

Weird coincidence.

November 16th, 2006 at 6:14 pm

j.d.a. — whatever attention Jason drew to AOL says more about AOL’s piss-poor corporate communications capabilities than it does about Jason’s success.

And I’d argue that line employees like Carnell and Lawver and many others did and do a h*ll of a lot more for AOL’s visibility and credibility in the tech community than Jason ever did.

(TechCrunch, Valleywag, GigaOM etc. readers “tech community”)

November 16th, 2006 at 6:21 pm

I echo Wicked Smahtie’s comments that Jason is a self-promoter. Look at how his ostensible “tribute” to Jon Miller turned the attention right back on Jason himself with his self-serving ending “Note: I’ve gotten a bunch of press folks contacting me about my future at AOL now that Ted Leonsis and Jon Miller are no longer with the company.”

And as for John Doe’s idea that “some of us are thinking the same thing here and that he was probably fired after they replaced the AOL CEO.” Sorry. The ink isn’t dry on Falco’s contract to take over a multi-billion dollar company. He has much, much bigger issues to deal with than Jason, Weblogs and Netscape.

November 16th, 2006 at 6:35 pm

Mike Rundle, you’re an idiot:
“From what I’ve read about the new head of AOL, he’s not a worthy replacement. Jon Miller was agile and fast-thinking, and the new CEO comes from a “big business” background that Google will now just rollover in stride. The goal is for a big company to act more like a little one, not the other way around, but obviously the board at AOL never got that memo.”

As I wrote on another blog: Jon Miller oversaw the decline of the aol membership from ~25M to between 15M-18M, depending on how they’re counting members these days. His leadership was… ahem… no existent. Fast-thinking? It took four years for him to have the balls, err, “leadership” to switch to a free service. That’s fast-thinking?

Jon Miller announced a massive re-org last August that still is not complete. What? He woke up one morning with an epiphany that a re-org was necessary, then has taken 4 months to do this? That’s fast-thinking?

The reasoning for this re-org is that AOL needs to transition to a “product-led company.” It’s been, ahem, led by what under his tenure? It took four years for this epiphany? That’s fast-thinking?

Anything good that came out of AOL under his tenure was done despite him, not because of him. I challenge anyone to provide facts otherwise.

Rich

November 16th, 2006 at 7:18 pm

What will he do once he’s left?

November 16th, 2006 at 9:27 pm

It is a pity. I thought Jason would change AOL into a nimble web 2.0 workhorse.

November 16th, 2006 at 10:23 pm

Rich — you didn’t think Mike Rundle was a genius, did you? Maybe he can send his resume for the position.

November 17th, 2006 at 12:45 am

I don’t read any of the weblogs now - and I never did. I personally do not use Netscape nor do I like it. But I also don’t read digg although I often vote for items around the ‘net if I like it.

But there’s a reason Jason’s personal blog is on my daily read list in my Bloglines and always watch all of the podcasts or vidcasts that pops up around the http://www. Got a lot of respect for the guy, what he’s done and what he says .. and I wait for the success of his next project (and hopefully more RSS feeds to add to my Bloglines).

This isn’t news to me (where i.e. the Duncan story is).. didn’t we all expect it after some standard time after the acquistion? But, there are a lot of links out there from my other bloglines linking back to this entry so I thought I would post my 2cents here // Take care // HART

November 17th, 2006 at 7:09 am

Great job Calcanis, what’s the total usage of Netscape.com now? 10% of what it use to be? Good riddance, Maybe AOL will hire back everyone you helped to layoff.

November 18th, 2006 at 9:55 pm

Uh, Michael, grabbing my photo of Jason is cool, but how about an attribution? :~)

http://www.newmediamusings.com.....canis.html