Mahalo.com’s Jason Calacanis had a candid conversation with a packed ballroom and moderator Kevin Ryan. The house may have had search marketers of all kinds, but I suspect SEOs could have been there in high numbers due to the perceived history of SEO bashing on Calacanis’s part.  He began by clearing the air as he clarified that his past SEO remarks were directed at black even grey hat tacticians and proclaimed to be a Search Engine Optimizer himself, if making friendly content defined the practice.

His openness to his business approach and opinions of the industry (and as we found out later his personal contact information including his cell phone number for a dinner invite to dim sum) is reflected in Mahalo’s openness to engage the conversation with the user for which the other search engines have opposed from the beginning. In fact, the lack of communication by the engines with webmasters was the very birth of SEO. Mahalo invites the discussion with businesses regarding their rankings. Mahalo’s retooling of the search wheel seems to be part directory, part social network, part algorithm and part unknown as Calanais mentioned the collection of data which hasn’t found an exact purpose yet. The results are universal, the feel is personal, your data is portable and all of this can be networked if you chose.

Mahalo’s human-indexing of the web, page by page, is being done by the general public who submits pages for cash if admitted. The army of submitters is growing by the day as Calacanis plans to have one of the largest workforces in the world if the growth continues. He wrapped by the users stand point on the SERP as something they could care less about in terms of its construct. Consumers only care if the content is good.  

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