Jason Davis comes out and says that he understands Jobster's viewpoint. While he says it was not his intention to compete, he understands that Jobster has a right both to hold him to his non-compete and in their view, they felt Jason was violating the terms of their agreement.
Jobster, on the other hand, has agreed not to try to shut down RecruitingBlogs.com, and seems to have given Jason Davis some leeway in pursuing things that interest him.
In return, Jason Davis is going to use the RecruitingBlogs.com platform to help promote Recruiting.com (which he was already doing, but it will be more visible now).
All in all, a happy ending for everyone. Could it have been headed off prior to the public airing of the Cease and Desist letter? Possibly. I'm always a little leery of anything getting done with lawyers get involved - they are paid to win, not to play nice. Check out a recent article from Techdirt to understand who should be in charge of such decisions.
But still - maybe we can all use this moment as a way of breaking tension, and starting over.
The Recruitosphere, or whatever we want to call it, is small. It's influence is small because so very few recruiters know about us. As I've mentioned before, the knitting blogs are kicking our you-know-what in numbers. Cyberspats between influentials in the recruiting blogosphere make no sense, because we're fighting over such small turf, and the results create negative backlash for all of us.
So I'm hanging up the gloves, and let me be the first to extend a hand to every person I squabbled with, and wish them the best. I want Recruiting.com to succeed with John Sumser at the helm. I want Jobster to succeed with Jason Goldberg at the helm (I am a stockholder, after all). The more successes for each of us, the better for all of us.
A lot of people have taken a negative stance towards Jobster, and I think that's a mistake, and has been on occasions, unfair. Despite their faults, Jobster has done more than any other online employment company to spread the idea of new and more effective ways to hire more people. In the end, that is the purpose of all of this blogging. We want to hire more people and make more money.
So while I'm not a big fan of holding hands and singing Kumbaya, I would very much like to see recruiting bloggers start to work together, and my posts will reflect that - beginning with social media marketing strategies that companies can employ to tap the potential of the recruiting blogosphere.
Find San Francisco
jobs at SanFranJobs.com.
