We love Jason Calacanis here at TechCrunch, which is why we partner with him on our TechCrunch50 startup event. Not only is he a proven entrepreneur (he sold Weblogs Inc. to AOL, and is now running Sequoia-funded Mahalo), but he’s one of the best self promoters on the Internet. He famously shut down his blog, but somehow he’s now running it again with thousands more followers, for example. And more recently he grabbed attention by offering to pay Twitter $250,000 over two years for a suggested Twitter account.
Twitter is wisely ignoring the circus as they focus on handling massive growth and whatever their real business model will eventually be. But now one of the Twitter users who actually was given a suggested account and has nearly 200,000 followers is offering to sell his spot to Calacanis. And the money will be used to fight breast cancer.
Brandon Mendelson writes about his offer here:
I have a suggested user spot on Twitter. I am thankful to Ev and the folks there for choosing me to have this spot. But I don’t have an ego, and to me, it is not about how many followers I have. I know that we stand in the worst economy many of us have ever witnessed. People need help, and they need help now. I want to help those people.
I don’t know how we could arrange this, but if you’re serious, and this is not some B.S. marketing ploy, I will ask the folks at Twitter to give you my spot, and we, the Foundation, will take the $250,000 to put it toward the fund.
I say Twitter should take this offer, publicly ask Jason to donate the money to Mendelson’s foundation, and then put him on the suggested user list. And they should also leave Mendelson on the list, of course.
Jason gets his spot, he’s called to the mat on a bluff he probably never thought would be accepted (and he’s upped the offer to $500k for three years), Twitter gets even more press attention. And oh yeah, a sizable chunk of cash gets donated to a worthy cause.
I guess this all assumes Twitter will keep the suggested users list, and it is certainly possible they won’t and hence the lack of communication from them on this.
I remember reading an article recently where I think Biz at Twitter said they introduced it as a somewhat temporary measure to reduce lack of engagement after new people signed-up: better to follow some random people than no one at all.
Why would you not want this to happen? Talk about a win win situation. Of course anything related to, “And the money will be used to fight breast cancer.” It is a plus in my book after loosing a family member four months back. I say, what the heck go for it!!
~dc
It would be great if this could be arranged. A lot people do need help and this would def help out alot of people in need. Hoping Twitter arrange this.
http://twitter.com/cliffdailey
i agree obviously.
I just feel bad for Jason that was obviously betting on Twitter ignoring him – him getting lots of free press – him keeping the money.
Pay up Jason
i think jason needs to get more popular and earned the spot legit without having to pay to get there
It’s true, Jason’s not nearly as popular as breast cancer.
Branden: Jason is now offering $500,000 , so please make sure to collect it all. You could also ask Jason to raise it up a notch to $750,000 , he’ll still do it.
Nice post! Check out my site as well at http://macmaniapodcast.com.
howcome blatant spams such as the above message are allowed?
Why not just do a Pay Per View show where we maim Calacanis and feed him to a rabid pack of bulldogs. I would pay to watch that. I am sure it would raise more than 250k and we would not have to give Calacanis a bigger platform. I mean, after the funeral, people would probably stop talking about him and more about how he died.
That’s exactly what HE wants!
Don’t you get it man?! You can’t kill him. You can’t shut him up.
He doesn’t need a blog and he doesn’t need to sleep, or breathe, or defecate!
He is…. Calacanis!
If Jason is not BS’ing why doesn’t he just make a deposit to an escrow account and simply ask Twitter if they want to take on his offer?
Talk is cheap!
Twitter would be smart to ignore this whole thing. The mess caused by just accepting Jason’s offer is now compounded by the mess of having two more parties involved. Some guy who didn’t read the twitter TOS and thinks he has any say in his slot on the suggested users list and a charity that probably doesn’t want to be a participant in some internet fameball stunt.
wait, he’s blogging again?!
I have a better idea. Use that money for the people Mahalo laid off. Twitter doesn’t need the money but unemployed workers do.
Great idea! One thing, though…was Calacanis actually serious about spending the $250,000? Or, was it just a marketing ploy? Michael, seeing since you guys know Calacanis so well, you should run this by him to see what he thinks about the idea. This would be an awesome PR move on Twitter’s part!
If you care about a charity, donate your money. Now. Lots of it. But for god’s sake, don’t make it a publicity stunt aimed at getting people to do what they’ve already iterated that they do not want to do. It’s just fucking disgusting to see someone use the chronically ill as pawns in a PR game.
Did you even read the article? This is a very generous offer by Brandon Mendelson to give up something he doesn’t want or need in exchange to help people he doesn’t know. And Jason isn’t trying get publicity from breast cancer. He had his standing offer to Twitter before the Mendelson stepped into the picture.
yeah, that has nothing to do with what’s going on here. see Melvin’s comment above.
And too bad for Twitter if they decided they did want to take him up on the original offer because it was easy cash…
If they take the money from him now, rather than giving it to charity, they’ll look like greedy douches.
This is great! I can’t wait to see what happens next…
Wow! This would be fantastic for everyone involved. Twitter would probably be the biggest beneficiary and it could be part of a series of things that take them over the tipping point (for everyone outside of SF.) Let’s see if it really happens.
It’s just a matter of time before someone creates a secondary market for people to sell their Twitter audience IMO -
If Evan and Jack will do this so will I.
Lots of talk about a business model for Twitter… how about one for Mahalo?
By Jason’s own numbers, he would need to get $7-14 CPMs on the visits to Mahalo from Twitter (he suggests 1-2MM visits/month @ $500k / 3 years).
$7-14 CPMs… and they run Google Ads.
I really like this deal. I’m sure Brandon and his foundation could do a lot with the money and Jason will certainly get a lot of value out of the Twitter spot. My question though is how many users do you think you can get with this new spot over (2 or 3 years)? Any guesses?
Calacanis predicted 1-2 million visits to Mahalo per month.
If the money is going to be donated to fight breast cancer, please donate to a credible organization — The American Cancer Society. The only organization that actually HELPED my mother when she was going through the whole ordeal.
Avon and these other shady organizations raise tons of money, but none of the actual cancer patients see where it goes. If it goes to raising “awareness”, that’s horse shit. I think the general population is quite aware.
With that said, I’m all for this endeavor.
If I can jump in here for a moment, I hate linking out, but if there are questions as to how the money would be utilized, further information can be found here:
http://www.theb...how.com/donate/
My phone number and email address is also on that page if there are questions.
J is a good guy. Can take the time to respond to my emails within just a few minutes… and I’m just a lowly follower
The problem is that Jason already admitted that he was basically bluffing.
You want the truth?
Twitter management is busy working on monetization, dreaming up plans to generate hundreds of millions in revenue in the next few years.
Jason’s offer amounts to less than 1% of what Twitter expects to make in the future. Why even bother considering it? The risk of entering into a business model they don’t want by far outweighs the upside of 1%.
That’s why you hear a lot of external noise, because $250K is a lot to the regular people, but insignificant for the company. So they rightly ignore it.
It’s a sheer waste of time for Twitter to listen to Jason and others about their offers. They would rather spend more time stabilizing their servers and improve their functionalities. Twitter should move beyond just connecting people, otherwise companies like Boilingpage ( http://www.boilingpage.com ) will take their position soon .. this website shows popular pages among twitterers and I find it very interesting. Worth a shot.
Jason is definitely bluffing. He can’t even pay Mahalo employees on time.
I really can’t imagine Jason is will to part with any of his own money.
Twitter and donations.,Twitter with there “un reveled”business model,Jason calanis with his “Buzz of trust 250,000 Twitter spot.when all together works for good,works for other people,and works for better world,my thumbs up always with this “new entrepreneur,thanks for make this internet “more then just a Porn and gamble
Absolutely brilliant initiative!
@Twitter – Make this happen & use it as a foundation for your CSR initiatives. Twitter PR, you are going to want to jump into this one with both feet and harness the goodwill that is yours for the taking.
@Jason – What a great opportunity for you to be a real Mensch. Hope you can make it happen.
@Brandon – You have already shown the world that you are a true Mensch. Bravo! and keep up the good works.