Jason Calacanis: One Step Closer to Owning the New York Knicks

I’d kind of like to see it. I remember the glory days of Earl Monroe, Clyde Frazier, Dave Debusschere, Willis Reed, etc. The Dolans have run the franchise for far too long now. New blood!

I was going to go with the headline of: “Facebook to buy Mahalo for TEN BILLION DOLLARS?”, but I didn’t want to get the Dolans too excited. People will be all over Robert Scoble for this (watch the videos, they’re worth watching), especially the Web 2.0 dweebs who don’t understand that most of the world doesn’t think the same way as they do.

Scoble predicts in four years time, Techmeme, Mahalo, and Facebook are going to cause problems for Google.

Though I’m sure it won’t have any impact on Google’s stock price tomorrow and I’m not as convinced Google can’t compete well with what he’s talking about, Scoble is on to something. And hats off to Scoble, as I’d have placed him as one of those Web 2.0 dweebs.

I don’t yet buy as Scoble does that it’s just not in Google’s DNA to do something like Mahalo (and Techmeme and Facebook) itself or just buy them, but I loved where in part 3 he riffed on Yahoo for a bit as being the potential wildcard in all of this. “Watch out for Yahoo!” (about the only thing that would’ve made that any better for me is if he had said, this means YOU Kara Swisher!).

I’m still agnostic on Mahalo, but I like the premise of it a lot and want to see what happens when they have 25K human edited pages. Jason’s play here is the 80-20 rule. He doesn’t plan for Mahalo to be as all encompassing as Google, instead going for the 20% of the searches that probably represent 80% of the search market. Though why Mahalo already has pages on bacon and kielbasa and not TV Ratings is…interesting.

But c’mon, don’t you want to see Calacanis high fiving with Spike Lee during the NBA finals?

Scoble’s plan that you would only find out about the videos via social networking and not Google went south in about 10 minutes (very good natured of Scoble to post the link via twitter himself). If anything Google has gotten better and faster over the last 6 months.

Note to Scoble: More white boarding videos, less blogging. You’re a natural!

Why David Stern and the NBA are Pulling for Lebron

On bent knees baby, on bent knees. I'm rooting for it myself. Why? Well Lebron is certainly the real deal. He has star power. More star power than Wade and an aging Shaq I think, but if he gets in the finals it will put it to the test?

Why? Well, honestly even though Tim Duncan may be the single best team player in all of basketball, he's in San Antonio and either by choice or not, he isn't exuding star power in this way. (You know all of those commercials with the Lebrons? There isn't anything like that with Tim Duncan), but we know how the ratings are when San Antonio is in the Finals...

Here are the past results for San Antonio in the NBA finals (all data courtesy of Nielsen Media):

6/9-23/2005	ABC	7	8.2	15	8,951,000	12,544,000	San Antonio/Detroit
6/4-15/2003	ABC	6	6.5	12	6,955,000	9,864,000	San Antonio/New Jersey
6/16-25/1999	NBC	5	11.3	21	11,205,000	16,014,000	San Antonio/New York

First things first, clearly the NBA misses the New York Knicks not being a solid franchise. Stern probably hopes Dolan has a massive heart attack and decides to get rid of all his business interests which would be good, at least in the case of the Knicks since he's done such a lousy job. But if Lebron and whoever the other 4 people Cleveland puts out on the floor can get to the finals, we'll have an opportunity to see the impact of Lebron. My prediction is it will outdo this:

6/08-20/2006*

ABC

6

8.5

15

9,332,000

12,972,000

Miami/Dallas

Will Lebron crack the 10 million home threshold for the first time since 2002 (Lakers/Nets) when 10.7 million homes tuned in. My prediction: yes. But first they have to get in the finals, like Stern and the rest of the NBA (who aren't affiliated with the Pistons) are hoping. I'm hoping for it too.