Gnomedex, Dave Winer, Jason Calacanis and the Definition of Spam

Yesterday, Jason Calacanis was giving his talk at Gnomedex about his new project Mahalo. Jason was talking about how SEO is turning search results into spam and how the Mahalo wiki with its human volunteers is going to help things.

That’s when Dave Winer yelled from the back row that Jason was “spamming” us by promoting his own project. [Jason's response.]

It’s unfortunate that this happened because both of these guys are really brilliant and bring a lot to this space. I admire them both for their intellect and their boldness. Both of them are doing their best to make the world a better and more interesting place. And yes, they’re both looking out for their own bottom lines, which is as it should be.

Dave did have a point. Yes, Jason was promoting his latest venture from the stage. He was marketing. It’s true. He was acting in his own self-interest. But I don’t think he was spamming.

Why? Because he was adding value.

It’s not like Jason took the stage and started talking about how we should all send him $10,000 so that we could get out of Nigeria or trying to sell us Viagra. He was talking about a real problem — link pollution in Google and other search engines — and how to solve it.

Human indexing of top search results has been around for a while, and there are problems with it. Bias and scalability being the most obvious. But I do see Mahalo as a genuine attempt to make money while adding something to the world. That’s what good businesses do. And when good businesses talk about what they’re doing — a.k.a. marketing — the talk itself adds value because it sparks good questions.

I think Jason met those criteria yesterday. Maybe I’m just young and idealistic. But I don’t think so. What do you guys think?