they turn users into evangelists by making it easy to contribute
they have so many inbound links
where possible they replace their outbound links with links to more internal Wikipedia pages (I just saw a page on performance based SEO pricing models, which seems outside the scope of the goals of an encyclopedia)
when they do link out they use nofollow
Nofollow is the flip side of paid links - you pay content creators for a while (with links), and then stop paying them while keeping their content.
In an attempt to follow Wikipedia's strategy (but with monetization) Mahalo...
is creating a bunch of easy to read how to articles (though I am not sure I would trust a guide covering how to invest online from a person who is willing to spend a couple days writing it, for less than $100)
now allows people to recommend links without logging in
allows anyone to create new pages
In the past couple years Google has killed many paid link sources, and stripped PageRank from most general directories and most article directories. Given how much harder it is got to get clean links, some SEOs will be tempted to add content to Mahalo hoping for the outbound reference link, but in a year Mahalo will likely claim they need use nofollow to stop spam, so the opportunity is probably fleeting.
Really... had Squidoo not been slammed Mahalwho would be nothing but another spam farm as it was originally designed. Sans that model, it's lost in space. So what? One of thousands of projects seeking to reduce costs, increase traffic and maximize revenues in order to "be something" on the web (because otherwise it is nothing).
This week it's a "human powered search engine" next week it's an "encyclopdia" or maybe this week we give 32" flatscreens to our workers, while next week we cut their pay because it's such a genius move to call the bluffs on the "starving artists"... why is this important?
Bottom line: it's a project run by Jason Calcanis. Enough said. If you can't figure out that it's all about me me me me and he'll be monetizing your content for himself, with nofollow if it makes sense, scraping if it works, or whatever, then you are his target.
Quick fact check: all user submitted links are no follow already (and have been since the start). If you submit a link you get no google juice for it UNLESS we review it and add it to the page.
Also, we noindex all the short user generated pages until they are in the 300-400 original word range. So, most user generated stuff never gets indexed in Goog/yhoo.
Ha ha the money grabbing scum bag has done it, Mixx as well tut tut. I am going to blog this I think. What was it Jesus said, do onto others or something?
The link in this post will be getting nofollowed for starters:
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