Jason Calacanis, CEO and founder of Mahalo, has managed to turn layoffs into link bait for himself and Mahalo.  Mahalo is a self described next generation search engine (more realistically an about.com business model with freelance/contract editors and writers).  

Some months ago Mr. Calacanis decided to stop blogging and communicate with his readers through an email newsletter.  The newsletter has grown to many thousands of followers.He has written about the impact of the financial crisis on startups and done a good job telling it like it is.His most recent email went into deep detail about the cuts he has made at his own company, the logic behind it and how he dealt with the situation.

I think he was right to make the cuts he did, as painful as they have been.  It is his responsibility to make those decisions and I know from first hand experience how hard those decisions and actions can be, but given the economic conditions every company should be taking similar actions.

While the content of his email is strategically correct, his style comes across as finding humor in the darkness of the situation which makes the email tough to swallow for anyone who has been hit by the swift turn in the market.  This makes it naturally link bait for the technology bloggers.
Mr. Calacanis has made it a point to make his entire life a marketing tool for his companies and rarely misses an opportunity to market himself or his company. In this case, he managed to turn layoffs into a personal and maybe a company marketing tool.

While he clearly stated his wishes that his email not be republished, it was ok to forward it on to others.  Mr. Calacanis is clearly a sophisticated blogger who knows that republishing his words would be irresistible to the blogger community. The result would be a huge kerfuffle not only over the content of his email, but his rights to protect his content in this way.  And so, it has been republished here, here and here along with others with an explosion of comment and links.

He has managed to turn the layoffs in his company into a big discussion on the web, and that means more links to Mahalo and more marketing for Mr. Calacanis. It means he has exchanged the layoffs in his business for the currency of the web, links. More links equals more page rank and that means better search engine optimization. I never thought that someone could turn this downturn into link juice, but Mr. Calacanis seems to have made that work, either though Machiavellian insight or through some less devious intentions.

I don’t know Mr. Calacanis, but have heard him speak his mind many times.  He is not a shy man and he is very, very good at promotion. I have agreed with his points much more often than I have disagreed. I think he is a smart, aggressive make money kind of guy who is good at building $50 to $100 million companies.

Sending out the email reflects his very nature. It’s the problem or perhaps the insight of his email. He found a way to turn the bad stuff into a marketing opportunity.

So what do you say?  Did Mr. Calacanis do a good job of making lemonade out of lemons, or did he overstep the bounds of decency?

BTW.  I can’t but find the irony in the company’s tagline “We’re here to help”