: Major update from the comments. Michele tells us:
Lunch with the interloper
: I had lunch today with Jason Calacanis, cofounder of WeblogsInc, which plans to revolutionize B2B media using blogs and which causes much hubub last week.
Jason is, as always, enthusiastic and engaging. He is also open, taking me back to his office to show me his new tools. I won't go into detail; that's for him to blog (and, yes, he will start a personal blog and work on one of this biz blogs).
I at least see the reasoning behind his creation of tools (he sees the chance to get richer data and to create links between blogs both editorially and in advertising; that, he says, will be easier to do in one environment). I heard more about his revenue strategy (he'll say more about that later). And he clarified his profit-share structure (he's not taking out his overhead before he shares, contrary to some speculation).
I don't know whether he can get as many successful niche biz blogs as he wants; don't know whether he'll get as many bloggers as he needs (though he says he's getting interested email aplenty already, thanks to the brouhaha hereabouts); don't know whether he can get as much revenue as he hopes. But, of course, no one knows any of that when you start a new biz.
We'll watch with interest....
Oh, Ted
: Ted Turner is depressed. I own Time Warner stock. So am I. But not this bad.
Ted tells a bunch of newspaper editors:
"If I had to predict, the way things are going, Id say the chances are about 50-50 that humanity will be extinct or nearly extinct within 50 years," Turner said. "Weapons of mass destruction, disease, I mean this global warming is scaring the living daylights out of me."
Ted on Iraq:
"We spent $87 billion to blow Iraq up and then we spent another $87 billion to put it back together, and all to get one man and we still haven't got him," Turner said. "Talk about a failure."
Yeah, that's almost as much as Ted lost when he sold to Time Warner.
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