There's a lot of context. The guy who made this site publically called out SEO's...

minalecs · on Jan 29, 2010

I guess to summarize, the only thing he did wrong was to be misleading about his exact knowledge on the topic of SEO. The thing is, you can start a business, and hire expertise. Thats not such a bad thing.

aaronwall · on Jan 30, 2010

No. That is not the only thing he did wrong.

The issue was that along with...

- calling the entire industry scum to pull in attention

- going out of his way to flam Squidoo as a spam site until he got them penalized

- creating something far spammier and far more automated than Squidoo

When you add it all together it is pretty bad.

alain94040 · on Jan 30, 2010

You sound like you hold a grudge. Really. Your only contributions on HN are to attack one person. Are you really sure this is proper?

aaronwall · on Jan 30, 2010

I don't just attack Jason. In my bottom comment on this thread I state that I think he is great at public relations...which he is.

Maybe not quite at the Matt Cutts level...but nonetheless way way way up there...like at least in the top 0.01%.

jasonmcalacanis · on Jan 30, 2010

exactly!

Aaron Wall can keep attacking me for a throw away comment from five years ago (five years!) and ignore the fact that I'm a fan of his as much as he wants.... but I'm not going to get baited into agree with what I said five years ago.

I was wrong about white SEO, I was right about black-hat SEO.

Aaron is sort of obsessed with me as you can see: http://www.google.com/search?&q=calacanis+site:seobook.c...

I've given him credit for teaching me the Jedi ways of SEO and for that I'm thankful. Don't be upset because you taught me how to do it well and in a white hat manner Aaron!

aaronwall · on Jan 30, 2010

Are throw away comments stated on keynote speeches multiple times?

Are throw away comments used as the core marketing and public relations strategies for a new company?

Just because you are hoping that people have short memories does not mean you can change reality.

Lets see what Jason called Youtube http://calacanis.com/2006/05/11/how-youtube-won-great-seo-st... "How YouTube Won: Great SEO + Stolen Content (or the biggest hit and run in the history of the Internet)"

And yet when Jason takes your content and wraps it in Mahalo that is somehow legitimate. hmm. double standard, eh?

That is not an area where I taught you anything...it was one you discovered on your own, while analyzing Youtube.

The other thing you mentioned about YouTube was "If YouTube makes $250M from a sale their founders and VCs should give $225M of it back to the content owners like NBC and Loren Michaels who they stole it from!"

And I do hope you hold yourself to your own standards. Though if history is any guide :(