As some of you know, when I’m not building websites, I also freelance blog for Weblogs Inc. I’ve been in LA this past week covering the Electronics Entertainment Expo, which is the world’s largest video game conference. Last night a group Weblog employees went to dinner with CEO and founder, Jason Calacanis. I had the opportunity to sit down with him and here are my thoughts.

Jason is a very savvy and energetic guy. He understands content. I sat across from him and picked his brain on all things blogs, SEO, YouTube success, AOL, and his thoughts on where online content is headed in general. AOL bought his company in October, and originally I thought it was because Weblogs does such a good job at driving traffic through selling convenience (in the form of attention) to millions of readers. They still do that, but after meeting with Jason, I feel that AOL really wants the man to trim fat, make AOL faster, more efficient, and add more valuable content. 85% of AOL’s revenues still come from their dial-up business. I’m guessing the other 15% comes off partner referrals or link love on the company’s homepage out to some of their other sites like MovieFone. Weblogs, on the other hand, is all word of mouth. It’s viral content. It’s so good, that people just go to it.

I look forward to getting to know him more and learn some of the traits that have made Weblogs one of the hottest, up-and-coming, content companies on the web. The great thing is that Jason is a lovecat too. He is an advocate for sharing information and knowledge and recognizes the importance of helping others progress. The rest of the Weblogs team are very passionate as well, and I’ve had a great time working aside them.

As a parting bonus, I also got to meet Chris Pirillo over dinner. He is a very friendly guy and technology evangelists that’s involved in some really cool mobile RSS search. I’m going to try to meet up with him at an SEO conference in Seattle next week, and in case you didn’t know, Chris was the host on TechTV during the infamous cylinder drop blooper. You can see him on the right.