There’s always something to howl about.

ActiveRain.com v. Move.com: Where’s Caleb?

Caleb Mardini was one of the founders of Active Rain. He played a significant role in the expansion of the network, offering weblogging tips and serving as one of the “community cops”. I’ve always been a Caleb fan because he was a sales guy; he sold real estate and originated loans before his tenure with Active Rain. He was the pivotal link between the tekkie-type owners and sales-type users.

Here’s Caleb swelling with pride about the sales profession:

Sales people should be celebrated. There are bad sales people I know. But they don’t represent what I did when selling. They shouldn’t be able to ruin the profession for me, or any other honest hard working professional out there. There are a whole lot of sales people who are making a difference in this world. They are doing a lot to assist people making important and life impacting decisions. In my recent past I took great pride in telling people I was a sales person. Sales is terrific and it makes the world go around. I have to say that as a sales person I took great pride telling people that I was in sales

How does a founding partner quit, in the midst of an obvious windfall, a mere week after he represented the Network in Louisiana?

Is Jon pulling a Michael Corleone ? Did Caleb throw in the towel because he recognized a no win situation?

If the former supposition is true, that a pretty crappy thing to do. If it’s the latter, then this trial is over before it got started.

Greg Swann raised the stakes by pointing out that Active Rain has thrown this lawsuit into the court of public opinion. Elevating its membership to advocates is risky. Public support and misplaced outrage has divided the community. Members are questioning whether the commitment they’ve made to the network was really worth it.

I’ve pointed out that Dustin’s existence at Move.com compromises its claim of innocence; Caleb’s sudden departure from Active Rain equally undermines the court of public opinion’s confidence in the veracity of the Network’s claim.

One thing is certain; this lawsuit is no longer a private matter. That privacy was usurped when the line was drawn in the sand in front of the stakeholders.

The matter can be cleared up with the stroke of a key.
< ?PHP include("ActiveRainMoveSaga.php"); ?>