Revisionist History - Calacanis Style

Jason Calacanis engages in some revisionist history on his weblog today.

Are you shocked?  I doubt it.

The topic is the battle between @NY and Jason's Silicon Alley Reporter back in the mid/late 90s for the hearts and minds of the NYC entrepreneurs and other participants in the first Internet bubble.

Jason claims that he "beat them (@NY) so bad that Jason Chervokas still can't get over it".

Well it may be true that Jason Chervokas "still can't get over it" although I frankly doubt it. But the rest of the post is full of revisionist history, starting with the "beat them so bad" part.

The truth is that SAR was the style section and @NY was the Wall Street Journal of the first internet bubble in NY.  SAR would cover the parties and @NY would tell you what strategies were working.  Calananis says that SAR "became the thought leader".  That's a joke but I am not laughing.

But it was the end game where @NY had the last laugh. As the Gotham Gal (who ran sales at SAR and knows a bit about this story) said at the end of her comment to Jason's post:

SAR was not a slam dunk. It was a great shot but it never made it into the basket. In my book, Jason and Tom slam dunked with @NY.

Exactly.

Comments

[Sam Pollenbresky]

SAR and @NY were both a joke from a "thought leader" perspective (the real online intelligence battle was between Forrester and Jupiter) but it seems like Jason Calacanis got the last laugh, no? He's much more relevant today than Jason & Tom who come across defensive and bitter. Sad.

Discrediting Calacanis for not "selling at the high" is a bit silly and quite easy to do in hindsight. Many people got burned and to what degree was more often a matter of luck than smarts.

We expect this kind of rabble-rousing schtick from him (it's quite amusing and if you haven't figured out his "game" by now then you've let him get inside your head in a bad way) but I wouldn't have thought you and Gotham Gal would resort to such petty talk either.

[Giordano]

I don´t know Jason Calacanis, but I read his weblog.
Why? Well, not because there interesting material there. It´s just... a voyeuristic thing: reading posts like this one, for me, is like peering nto the mind of someone so removed from me that is difficult to even understand how his thought processes work.
He delights himself in supposedly "kicking asses", "defeating" other people etc, while for me business, like everything else in life, is to be viewed with a positive mindset. I don´t go to the office in the morning thinking "I want to kill my competitors". I´d rather think "I want to do my best, for me, my team, and the stakeholders". And you know what? With rare exceptions, I´ve noticed that it works much better for me to befriend my competitors, finding spaces to collaborate, even when we go head to head in other spaces.
Or simply, if there´s not such possibility, just to keep in touch for news, industry info, Xmas wishes and other things. Results, for me, are always been good.In my industry, I´ve got a competitor with the same mindset as Jason... always on the lookout for a fight, with a "me or you" mentality.
Guess what? Everybody hates him, no one partners with him, and results are suffering.
In my opinion, there are two fundamental reasons to have a positive approach to competitors: 1) it makes good business sense 2) you get home at night feeling like a human being, and you can sleep well.
Just my thoughts...

[John Smith]

Jason makes me laugh. I admire him for his opportunistic success... but he was nothing more than a self-promoting bit-player, and let's face it, he got lucky this time...

I wonder how many people count him as a friend. He burned a lot of bridges. SAR was a circle jerk mag, and his way to blackmail people into submission. His true influence however never exceeded that of the impact of Page 6 of the NY Post on nation-wide DVD sales...

JS.

[Joe White]

I think we are best served by remembering neither of these pubs. I "read" them both at the time, but can't seem to recall any one article/insight/etc. of interest. Yes, SAR seemed like a gossip rag, with Jason the Walter Winchell of the times, but @NY didn't distinguish itself either. Frankly, I get more news, ideas and insight from A VC than both those pubs combined. I think we have all learned a lot...let's leave it at that.

[George Nimeh]

I always thought that SAR was the sizzle and @NY was the steak. They were both required reading if you wanted to be part of Silicon Alley - a term which I always kinda liked. Sorry, Fred.

The term helps outsiders understand something about what is going on. Like the now infamous DCLK billboard. It is a signpost. It is ... a brand.

But I digress ...

Calacanis can't resist the opportunity to grab headlines and attention. It is in his blood. It makes him who he is and is why he does what he does. The rise and fall of the SAR are both perfect examples of his ego at work. The sale of Weblogs Inc. shows that even an (semi) egomaniac can learn from past experiences.

What has always surprised me (and from a few of your earlier posts, I think surprises you, too) is why Tom and Jason never got the band back together again and started blogging. If @NY was their prelude, the @NY blog could have been a symphony.

And tell the Gotham Gal that I think her comments and feedback on Calacanis' post are spot-on.

Later,
~G~

[fred]

sam - don't take any of this as all that serious.

we are having some fun remembering old times in light of the silly-con alley story in the times over the weekend

[kisi]

What has always surprised me (and from a few of your earlier posts, I think surprises you, too) is why Tom and Jason never got the band back together again and started blogging.
Jason makes me laugh. I admire him for his opportunistic success... but he was nothing more than a self-promoting bit-player, and let's face it, he got lucky this time...