Wired News Interview With Jason Calacanis, Unedited Version
Click here for edited feature with introduction. — "Wired Interview With Jason Calacanis, Unedited Version" By Adario Strange — Wired News: Will video become a part of Mahalo, or will you remain primarily text/link oriented?
Context & Ripple Effects
Jason Calacanis arrived at this interview straight out of AOL, which he left in November 2006, naming ousted CEO Jonathan Miller as a key business mentor. Mahalo is his first major venture since, and Wired's Adario Strange used the sit-down to probe its scope: whether the service stays primarily text-and-link oriented or expands into video.
The unedited transcript matters because a screenshot circulating since May 2007 — still unconfirmed — suggested a Calacanis prototype called Kokua combining video search, a Wikipedia-style engine, and a podcasting directory along About.com lines. Publishing the full Q&A lets readers see exactly how far Calacanis would go on the record about that direction, stripped of Wired's editorial framing.
First-order effects
- Competitors, journalists, and early adopters get Mahalo's product roadmap verbatim from its founder rather than through Wired's edit, making every answer quotable by any outlet without Wired as intermediary.
Second-order effects
- If the rumored Kokua direction is real, Mahalo stops competing as a link service alone and presses into guide-style territory occupied by About.com-like properties, forcing those incumbents to answer for video and podcast curation too.
Third-order effects
- The unedited-release format points toward a standing tension in tech coverage: founders gaining a channel to present raw, unfiltered positioning around pre-launch products while outlets retain the gatekeeping role of what gets cut.
The trend: Search startups of this era are widening from text-link results into mixed-media human curation, and their founders are increasingly bypassing editorial filters to frame that expansion themselves.