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Jason Calacanis Resigns

techcrunch.com — TechCrunch has reported that Jason Calacanis, everyone's favorite Digg basher, has resigned from AOL. His response at this time is "No Comment".

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  • rye134, on 10/12/2007, -73/+23I don't know much about him but he seems like a pompous jerk. People should leave Digg alone and spend the time coming up with their own original ideas instead of ripping off Kevin Rose.

    I wonder why he left AOL? Was he asked to resign? Does he have some other project he is working on?
    • schestowitz, on 10/12/2007, -20/+122Digg didn't invent the idea of voting on stories to align them in order. That said, there is a great similarity between the sites.

      You can mod me down if you must, but it's the truth. One could in fact argue that Digg inherits many ideas from Slashdot, but its community is 'for sale' ---something that rob Malda would never consider.
    • Yashar, on 10/12/2007, -54/+12We call this "pulling a Donald Rumsfeld"

      Brag Brag Brag then get PWNED.
    • deanlowe, on 10/12/2007, -4/+46"---something that rob Malda would never consider."

      Were you not around when VA Linux bought SlashDot?
      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/02/03/va_linux_buys_slashdot_org/
    • PatrickFisher, on 10/12/2007, -4/+163"Jason Calacanis Says Adios to AOL"

      I said 'adios' to AOL four years ago.
    • gabrielwalker, on 10/12/2007, -28/+8"We call this "pulling a Donald Rumsfeld""

      Lois Lane, from "Lois and Clark":
      "Now there you're using that word again Clark. There is "you'. There is "I'. There is no "we'."
    • noodlez, on 10/12/2007, -2/+228it must've taken him years to get through to a customer service rep that was willing to take his resignation letter.
    • LegendarySock, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17@PatrickFisher
      but it probably took a year to cancel your account in the first place
    • moonwell, on 10/12/2007, -16/+2who the ***** is this? ain't worth an article, just a punk.
    • titlesaysitall, on 10/12/2007, -13/+4This is crazy and really sudden. Jason didn't post it on his Blog so maybe it's not official or not going to happen.
    • sophiaperennis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I wonder if the Netscape Navigators are going to continue to get paid after his departure. He resigns after one year, that is darn fast for someone who was so enthusiastic about Netscape on his own blog.

      Calacanis, what happened? Maybe he wants to get in on that purportedly 200M he mentioned that would be the exit-money for the Digg founders, hahahaha!
    • jrking, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4noodlez: best comment ever.
  • canewediggit, on 10/12/2007, -3/+36will this beat "rumsfeld resigns" to 1000 diggs?
    • jaredvolkl, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15I was thinking the same thing. I bet this hit's the homepage within minutes.
  • ActiveTuning, on 10/12/2007, -53/+6I submitted this 2 minutes before you :)

    http://digg.com/tech_news/Jason_Calacanis_Resigns_From_AOL
    • ThatsUnpossible, on 10/12/2007, -5/+49Digg needs to hire someone that knows how to form a good regex or two. Let's see, your two submissions weren't seen as dupes by the filter because yours didn't have the slash at the end of the URL like this one does... LAME. Fix this, digg.

      The other thing digg needs to do is cache a copy of the page when it is submitted, internally, so that they can compare the actual content of future submissions to existing content, via fingerprinting of some sort. Not too hard to do, and it would cut down on dupes.
    • ActiveTuning, on 10/12/2007, -36/+2Oh is that what it is? That is lame...well digg mine :) and bury this
    • canewediggit, on 10/12/2007, -15/+4unpossible- i'm not a tech guy so i could be way off base here, but i find the dupe catcher to do a fine job. the only time it seems to fail is in the first 2-5 min (like in this case) where i'm assuming things need time to get through the system.

      or maybe rye just ignored it because he knew this should get front paged pretty easily. either way, i think active's 2nd comment was pretty rude so i'm not going to bother. and i'm pretty adamant about only digging originals.
    • rye134, on 10/12/2007, -3/+25No, for the record it did not come up as a dupe. I really don't care that much about submitting stories to Digg, because every time I've tried to, someone had already beaten me to it. If it had come up has a dupe I wouldn't have submitted it.

      I was actually pretty surprised at the time that it hadn't been dugg yet.
    • ActiveTuning, on 10/12/2007, -15/+5I didn't mean to be rude, it was said jokingly...I know it's hard to portray on the internet but that's what the smiley was there for ;)
    • canewediggit, on 10/12/2007, -10/+6sorry, man. just how i read it. i didn't think unpossible was taking a shot at you but was raising a point about something digg needs to work on. and it seemed to me you were calling him a jerk, smiley or not. i hear you though, typing doesn't do the best job of conveying emotional subtleties sometime.
    • ActiveTuning, on 10/12/2007, -11/+3Oh I wasn't thinking he was taking a shot at me...I was saying if that's the case regarding digg not finding duplicate stories, that is lame (in agreeance with unpossible). All good, looks like this SECOND submission is going to get dugg up. AMOST got one! haha
    • canewediggit, on 10/12/2007, -14/+6don't worry, i feel your pain.......

      http://digg.com/celebrity/The_top_Ten_Hottest_Billionaire_Heiresses_includes_slide_show
  • rye134, on 10/12/2007, -13/+3I just think it is creepy how many people in the world are sitting at home right now all doing the same exact thing. Don't you love the internet?
  • rye134, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14Does anyone think that his leaving is related to Jon Miller leaving AOL also?
    • Ascendant, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18Quite likely. Miller seems to be the only topic that changes Calcanis' posting style from arrogant bravado to all sincere and weepy-eyed.
    • MellerTime, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10The writing on the wall would like to speak with you about a Cease and Desist order from AOL...

      For what it's worth, if I were CEO of AOL now, my first order would have been to have him canned...
  • TheToecutter, on 10/12/2007, -11/+7Who? AOL?
  • lordsandwich, on 10/12/2007, -4/+64"No Comment"

    Judging from the activity on the new Netscape.com, I think that might've been a pun.
  • cprincipe, on 10/12/2007, -15/+7Nice, can we get Chris Pirillo to never appear on TWIT again as well?
  • zionKing, on 10/12/2007, -7/+14So long idiot boy!
  • bitrich, on 10/12/2007, -5/+31hahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
  • ToddML, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19Basically, he was Jonathan Miller's bitch, and when Miller was replaced by the guy from NBC yesterday, Calacanis was doomed.
  • rovertly, on 10/12/2007, -6/+27"no comment"
    this guy is a douche bag of the highest order.
  • kevin45, on 10/12/2007, -2/+28Sorry, who?

    And who takes AOL seriously anymore?
  • Popdmb, on 10/12/2007, -4/+17Calacanis had reaaaaallllly bad business sense. I don't know that he's necessarily going to be missed. (from a financial perspective...I'm sure he has friends that will miss him for a couple of days)

    I'm hard on him due to his bashing of the Digg model, not Digg itself. If he criticized another website for "becoming successful on the backs of their main contributers" id be just as critical.

    The top users do it because it's fun to digg and share stories. Doing it for profit seems to take something out of it, and i can't explain what. While he had a nice idea, he completely misjudged the values and reasons people submit content to Digg, /., reddit, etc.
    • misterpony, on 10/12/2007, -7/+16Don't glorify the top diggers too much. Not all of them are submitting just for fun and to share. Just recently, many top diggers have been proclaiming their new contracts with Netscape so they can get paid submitting what they used to submit to digg: http://digg.com/tech_news/Netscape_Snags_3_More_Digg_Heavyweights
    • Popdmb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14@ misterpony

      I didnt say Calacanis was the only one with a rough sense of business.

      A lot of the commenters in your link (on Digg and Netscape) are right. Re-branding a website is an extremely difficult thing to do. Netscape's user base is much too broad to really be involved with social news.

      Think about Digg and Netscape like you would a term paper in college. Digg is predominately a tech news website, despite the other avenues they've taken in the past months. It's focused and it flows.

      Netscape is entirely different. Formerly a search engine, now it wants to be mail, search, social news, etc. All of these things attract a different demographic to a site already waning in popularity. To oversimplify it: Netscape doesn't know what it wants to be.

      Calacanis, for all the bragging and nonsense he did on his blog, didn't understand the importance of his user base OR the rationale behind people digging stories. It seems soem of the top diggers didnt either. (No offense at all to them...I enjoyed digging their stories when they were here. I'm sure they'll come back when they realize their stuff was appreciated.)
    • misterpony, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17Point taken. Netscape seems like the Titanic, but with the strange ability to draw people ON BOARD a dying ship.
  • Hitchhiker90, on 10/12/2007, -16/+7Some nobody resigns from AOL and this makes news? I don't get it.
  • sp1keNARF, on 10/12/2007, -4/+16as they would say on fark, calac0wned.
  • mouthster, on 10/12/2007, -17/+2http://www.johnberman.com/pics/funny/simpsons_nelson_haha2.jpg
  • mandarin, on 10/12/2007, -10/+6AOL is still alive?
  • manatee, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12That is AWESOME... he severely needs to be humbled... but, I doubt he ever will be. I'm sure he'll spin it in a new direction in his favor.
  • randydandy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14Resign A.K.A getting fired respectively.
  • moet, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12good riddance
  • felchdonkey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11I wonder if "jdawg" will digg this story?
  • totorototoro, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Weird, he just announced a huge expansion of his "NAVIGATOR" program too.
  • cyn0sure, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Score one for the community
  • AlexMarar, on 10/12/2007, -6/+11NANANA, NANANA, HEY HEY HEY, GOOD BYE!
  • zbeast, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Good bye, good luck, oh and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
  • accidental, on 10/12/2007, -13/+3Later Kevin Ross Wannabe :)
  • geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16http://www.calacanis.com/

    "I wouldn't want to manage someone like myself"


    Not even he wants to manage himself. This "resignation" looks more like a "firing". Welcome to the corporate world kid, now out to the curb.
  • billtaylor, on 10/12/2007, -14/+5Listen AOL was sucking that's what I tried to tell Jason months ago.

    http://diggvsnetscape.blogspot.com
  • IMA_Sellout, on 10/12/2007, -8/+8This just in... Calacanis has started a podcast called The Last 7 Days in Tech! It can be found on his new podcast channel Revamp III.
    • rye134, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2please tell me you are kidding...lol
    • IMA_Sellout, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8I am but i mean... how long until we see Calacanis and some random sitting on a couch, drinking beer on a weekly video podcast called "ScapeNation" or something to that effect. I mean the guy half-jokingly called his podcast on the blog JasonNation.
    • IMA_Sellout, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4you know what... come to think of it... since AOL still owns the Netscape name, Netscape.com and everything else that belongs to Netscape, he'll probably just be on a couch drinking, looking at Netscape muttering on about the good old days and how he used to rule the internet.
  • Rivetgeek, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18In other news, rats were fleeing a sinking ship somewhere in the ocean today.
  • charlie55, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7it is good to see that guy fail, he is an unbearable *****. that time he was on twit, i was stunned that a person could have a personality so grating, i dunno how anyone could be in the same room with him.
    • mateo60, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2THATS him??? I never put it together that annoying SOB was the same annoying SOB that started Netscape. What a *****.

      I had to turn off that episode of TWiT (Episode 57: Vloggercon) because he was so annoying.
  • aragami, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7the problem with netscape is all the pages on the front story have less than 100 votes or whatever they call them over there

    i dunno who this calacanis guy is but to me he seems like a pompous talentless *****
  • raabco, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6At first I didn;t have a clue as to who this guy was, or why this story was so dugg...

    then I Checked out his blog.

    "On this blog I write about the startup experience, my life, my bulldog, and my Knicks."

    Thankfully it wasn;t a coma, and a few hours later I woke up, and came here to report my findings.
  • BurritoFueled, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1"Goodbye"

    *squeeky door closing*
  • Amplix, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I'm so happy.. I just logged into digg girlfriend's login and dugg this with her account too
    • Amplix, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5woah woah... insert "my" right after "digg"

      Didnt catch that, but you're all smart enough to figure it out


      edit: i'm ***** stupid... i mean switch "Digg" and girlfriend" and insert "my" before those.. oh ***** it
    • rye134, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2haha don't worry we get it
  • rye134, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4THe last post on his blog was about a podcast he did to talk about how he is feeling.

    "Did a quick podcast last night to talk about how I'm feeling." --from www.calacanis.com

    wow...
  • PSPon, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5No Comment
  • thedove, on 10/12/2007, -8/+7this is GREAT news! here's my question...will netscape stop paying submitters? if they do, it'd be really interesting to see if the defectors like bloodjunkie, msaleem, etc. will come back to digg.

    msaleem, the BIGGEST sell-out of them all and who repeatedly beats up on digg with his lame blog, is the most interesting. he totally forgot that the ONLY reason he got a job was b/c of digg. i'm looking forward to him losing that job and quietly trying to retain his place back on digg. it'll also be interesting to hear if he still praises the absolute greatness of jason calacanis and his new netscape.
    • BloodJunkie, on 10/12/2007, -7/+8That's quite the anti-social attitude to be sporting on a social news site. All are welcome as far as I'm concerned.
    • scooby2, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4I could never get in to nutscrape.com. Too much ad trash. Guess you have to make money to pay the nutscrapers some how. As for Calacanis, he was just another that got in to upper management by sucking dick. Lets copy Digg! Brilliant! Brilliant! (Guiness)
    • msaleem, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8Wow. thedove. You are such a tool. Would you like to enlighten us as to why this is great news?
    • hemphill81, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6@thedove
      This is the reason I have stopped posting on this site in the first place, because of asinine comments such as these. I would like to refer you to the Tool song "Hooker with a Penis" in case you need the lyrics http://www.toolband.com/album/lyrics/aenima.html
    • thedove, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4to be honest, i don't know why it's great news b/c i don't know what the specifics are on his resignation. he coulda been fired or this is all a hoax for all we know...

      this was just my playground to vent on msaleem's total lack of respect to digg once he defected and got paid. it's a shame b/c he wouldn't have these opportunities without digg. and that previous post about giving "credit where it's due" was COMPLETELY irresponsible. despite his update/retraction it clearly shows he's just willing to jump on digg whenever he gets the chance. whenever there is a story controversial against digg he ALWAYS digg that story, so do the other defectors. it's fine you sold out for money, defectors, but it's not cool to bash digg, give backhanded complements, etc.

      just digg stories without agendas, come on.
    • thedove, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1peace and love :)
    • sophiaperennis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'm more interested in hearing what the reason is why Calacanis left AOL, and if his successor will prolong the paid Navigator route. I was surprised by this news, given the enthusiastic writing about Netscape on his blog.
    • capn_caveman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4The dove... I've known you to be a big supporter for digg and all things digg for a long time. That's great, I can honestly respect that. You obviously believe in the model of news that digg presents and I can not find fault in you for what you believe.

      With that said, I must disagree with you on a couple of points (disclosure - I'm a Navigator on Netscape)

      First, your post implies that people that are now employed by Netscape all have some personal agenda against digg to promote anti-digg content. You use the words sell-outs and defectors in a broad sense to make it seem like everyone that has moved from digg to Netscape under the navigator program has turned their back on this community. In my opinion, this is completely wrong. I'm sure that the navigators coming to Netscape from digg still read digg, like digg, and participate (although in a more limited sense) on digg. If you read down my comment history, you will find that not once did I personally ever bash digg just because I'm at Netscape now. I think if you read the comment histories of other users that are now at Netscape, you will probably find the same thing. Just because we took a job and are making a few bucks doing what we like to do doesn't mean that we all of a sudden just turned around and said #$##%$@# digg.

      Second, you suggest members of the Netscape team are digging with an agenda. I offer you this question, who doesn't digg with an agenda? People have things that they are interested in more than others. If I spot Netscape news then I will digg it. If I spot great science news (my personal favorite news of all), then I will digg it. The fact is, I want to see an article make the front page and read community discussion - for better or for worse. I'll often digg articles that I don't agree with at all, just to see the population of the website discuss it and share my own thoughts. I just don't think your statement about digging with an agenda holds true.
    • blink21, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@capn_caveman:

      good points. I'm very glad to hear your comments about your experience with netscape and digg. we all use different sites everyday to get our news, don't we? netscape, reddit, slashdot, fark, newsvine - all have their place. and the more popular they become the more people also come to digg, which is good for us all.
    • capn_caveman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Blink... thanks for your reply. I just wanted to vent for a second or two on the whole Netscape / Digg thing . I just don't think for 1 second that the former diggers who are now at Netscape really have any grudges or bad feelings about digg. The former diggers on the Netscape Navigator list all seem to be very professional individuals and I feel like sometimes the digg community can be a little harsh on them. Digg on!
  • Dayyve, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1He probably had the wrong attitude about it, or rubbed people the wrong way. Not that he's a bad guy per se at all - but from what I've witnessed of the guy in interviews and such he seemed to come off as the the type of person who made a whole bunch of money really quick - it went to their head which quickly grew - and incorrectly believed that every other idea that had would turn to gold as well (which history shows almost always doesn't). Ah well best of luck to him and AOL/Netscape - which IMHO are getting outright thrown behind the shack and pummeled by Digg.
  • jalansutera, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0what about his offer to monetize Wikipedia? Is it still valid, Jason?
  • kilps, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3hehe ... all the netscape people are bleak about it http://tech.netscape.com/story/2006/11/16/jason-calacanis-resigns-from-aol/#comments

    you know just looking at that comments page shows me how much they ripped digg off ....
  • AlmostaGeek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This is a good thing for AOL!! I dont know why all the bloggers ride his jock, he is just a cal-anus
  • parthanant, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1This is bad thing for AOL.
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