Mahalo, The Brooklyn Way

A few weeks ago, a new search device debuted on this here internets, called Mahalo. It bills itself as the "world's first human powered search engine" thereby distinguishing itself from Yahoo! and Google which, to put it in simple terms, produce search results with technology that doesn't always make very good distinctions between what are the best results and what are dreadfully inadequate results that waste your precious time.

Sometimes garbage comes out accidentally, and sometimes garbage comes out because the search engine is being "gamed".

The brain trust behind the innovative Mahalo is the flamboyant, self promoting and brilliant Jason Calacanis, fresh off a stint at AOL after selling his company Weblogs, Inc. to AOL for a reported $25 million.

I've read a lot of the press on Mahalo, some of it good, some it viciously unkind, in the words of Annie Lennox. Whatever the initial thoughts that those in the technology world may have about Mahalo, this is clearly a project which won't reveal itself as genius or profoundly stupid for many years. Calacanis says he's working off a five year plan. Sounds about right.

I like the concept a lot, and I think Mahalo will ultimately make JCal a billionaire, instead of just a measly millionaire. I've always conceptualized the internet as a large, deep closet in an old house, and on most days, when you open it up a bunch of crap falls on your head. Kind of like the closet in the kid's show Zoboomafoo, for those parents of little ones out there, that dumps its contents on the Kratt brothers' heads everytime they open it. Sure, you need that closet, you root around in there everyday for something or other, but you always wish you could hire a "guy" to come in and organize it. Frankly, having crap falling on your head everyday gets old after a while.

Alas, we now have Mahalo: Calacanis is the "guy". The focus of Calacanis' energy seems to be on SEO's for the time being, but for me I find it more interesting that Mahalo will filter out the old and often useless junk that's sitting out there and only give you access to the most up to date, accurate and sharply focused information.

The most persistent objection to the Mahalo project seems to be the "scaleability" issue. Mahalo will only organize the 10,000 most popular searches, which, some say, is too large a task, and others say isn't nearly enough. For me, "scaleability" is code for "so f*&$ing big and so f*&$ing hard it makes me weak in the knees." If you spend enough time, pretty much anything can be scaled, even the internet. Of course, maybe where you start your life gives you the perspective of someone who sees scaleability as an obstacle to overcome, while most others may see it as prohibitive.

I met Jason when we were both teenagers, in Breezy Point, New York, a small, predominantly Irish community on the tip of the Rockaway Peninsula. I spent my weekends down there on furlough from a rather boring, bedroom town in Connecticut. I wore golf shirts with little flowers on them, and walked around in sneakers stained green at the ends from the grass I cut during the week. I won't say I "never had to scuffle in fear" as the Paul Simon song goes, but I lived a pretty comfortable life.

In addition to the profusion of nice girls and easily accessible beer, one of the best things about going down to Breezy, for me, was the opportunity to spend time with people who saw the world a little differently than I. You just don't come at life the same way when you grow up in Woodhaven, or Bay Ridge, that you do if you grow up in New Canaan, or Greenwich.

You generally don't walk around in golf shirts with flowers on them, and sneakers with grass stains on the ends.

While most of us spent our days worrying the aforementioned beer, and girls, Jason seemed to be preoccupied with other things. As I recall it, he was a black belt in some martial arts discipline, and was already spending a great deal of time involving himself with various businesses and developing technologies. He always seemed to be explaining something complicated, and his level of independence, and persistence, even at that tender age, was striking.

Of course, he wasn't entirely unique in that regard. Getting along in Brooklyn and Queens and Manhattan isn't easy, and most of the friends I made in Breezy had a certain fearlessness that I found somewhat alien, and invigorating.

And so, eventually, as you know, he would start peddling a rag out of a wagon that would turn into the Silicon Alley Reporter, and the rest is history. Now you can read about him in Fortune magazine, and the Wall Street Journal. Somehow he made the journey from a skinny teenager with a mullet, standing at the end of a walk in Breezy Point on a beautiful summer day circa nineteen eighty-something with our friend Joe, to poolside in Santa Monica organizing the internet from scratch. That's a hell of a trip, man.

And, so, for those of you out there who are skeptical about Mahalo, who think it's too big, or too small, for those of you who think it can't be a world beating, ass kicking success, I would think again. Sometimes the will of the man doing the deed is more important that the complexity of the deed itself, however daunting. In this particular instance, if you bet against Mahalo you bet against Bay Ridge, you bet against Brooklyn, you bet against Breezy Point, you bet against JCal.

I wouldn't do that, if I were you, nope.