2009 - Long Year, Tall Tales, Downright Lies, Hairdressers and Social Helium

In Calum Brannan's own words:

• The long year – 2009
  Some 12 months after we launched Youmeo, American startup Friendfeed launched and was achieving massive growth doing what we were doing. The worlds a big place and we knew that we wern’t the only ones predicting this is how social networking would become. Friendfeed was setup by ex-Google employees, with it’s growth doing so well we had our innovation validated but we and we failed to raise next round investment we needed and failed to secure a robust revenue model. Our team and investors all walked away with our heads held high, we had pushed for inovation and many ways succeeded – but what an experience it had been.
• Present day - 2009 to now.
  Aged 20, I’m working on some very exciting ventures collaborating with some of the greatest minds in British business, some are already trading and generating healthy returns:
  
  • Appointment-Toolkit; this service provides text message reminders and marketing to doctors, hairdressers and dentists.
  • Social Helium: a social media consultancy business where current and previous clients include house-hold names, ‘AAA’ PLCs, charities and government organisations. We are social networking experts.
  • Spendego – a new type of advertising agency for todays social media world.
  My teams are regularly involved in roundtable discussions and consultancy with leading CTO’s, marketing directors, CLO’s and CEO’s from a range of companies including Simon & Schuster, Vodafone, Bebo, AGA, Lighterlife, Christian Vision, Yahoo and Glam Media to name but a few.

 What a load of garbage, Calum - The only time you're "regularly involved in roundtable discussions...." with AAA clients, CxOs, etc is between the time you fall asleep and the time you wake up.  You're dealing with a charity that look like they are about to get hauled hard for their (alleged) unethical conduct in conspiracy with you and James Leavesley, i.e. Christian Vision

Aga aren't a client of yours, don't seem to have any formal business arrangements with you and probably wouldn't be too impressed to find that you're naming them as such.

Vodafone - can't find anyone there who's even heard of you and they weren't too pleased to find you're naming them!

Lighterlife - fair enough, they seem to know you.

But the rest is just a badly punctuated, poorly spelt figment of your fertile imagination, it seems.  Who are these government organisations?

You were getting near the truth with "failed to secure a robust revenue model."

But then it all went wrong again with "Our team and investors all walked away with our heads held high, we had pushed for inovation and many ways succeeded – but what an experience it had been."

By the way, there are 2 "n"s in "innovation".

The truth is that Youmeo is still with the Liquidators and you're now on your 4th company in less than 12 months and you'd probably be flat broke by now if you hadn't (allegedly) lied and deceived your biggest (only?) client into coming with you for the rest of the Boost.tv project when you unceremoniously dumped Inormas after they had bailed you out from Red Brick Labs and youmeo!

It's just sad and pathetic to see you trying to perpetuate the lies - do you even know when you're lying anymore?

It's a pity (as a number of people have commented during this research) that, when you're young and described in such terms as "charismatic and persuasive", you can't find ways to use this for honest, beneficial purposes, instead of looking for a quick buck and acting like (what appears to be) little more than a charlatan and a con artist in order to achieve your ends, whatever the cost to others who choose to support you or buy in to your "bulls**t".

Just out of interest, do you actually know off the top of your head exactly how many individuals you've let down, either as investors or clients through failed businesses, failed promises or failed deliveries of product?  Do you even care?

Summary of Calum Brannan's activities to date

Calum Brannan started a company at 15, called PPLparty, he then rolled that into Youmeo with some funding.

Calum wasn't making money, but he'd met James Leavesley, so they got some more money from investors known to James through IOD West Midlands and created Red Brick Labs, as a way to make money whilst trying to get Youmeo off the ground.

If Calum is to be believed, they weren't making money (again), so they sought alternative funding and received this in Spring 2009 and put Youmeo and Red Brick Labs into receivership, paid for by the new funder, which still hasn't been wrapped up! - is there a pattern emerging yet?


Now we come right up to date - Calum and James then walked out of Inormas and are now (apparently) using the names "Social Helium", although there's no website up yet and have a new Limited Company called CBJL Ltd, (Co. No. 07055592) - clever name, don't you think?  CB=Calum Brannan and JL=James Leavesley.  They also appear to be based from The Quadrant Business Centre at 3 The Quadrant, Coventry, CV1 2DY, which looks quite nice!


So they've now abandoned 3 companies, one way or another, leaving many tens of thousands of £'s of debt behind them in the process and achieved all this in about a year and the 2nd company (Youmeo/Red Brick Labs) wasn't even fully wound up before they'd already moved on to the 4th company!


Where's the money coming from to fund this company?  Well, that's a story for another day, and there's much, much more besides!!

CBJL start a new business to stop themselves

We found it interesting that CBJL seem to have created another new business.

This one, called dot com Guardian claims to assist businesses by moderation of content.  

To quote the site:

People powered moderation, for your brand.

We protect your brand and keep your community safe 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Our solutions are tailored to your exact needs.

How do we work?
dotcomGuardian plugs straight into your Facebook fan page or group. Within 10 minutes your brand can be protected from: 
- Obscene, abusive or intimidating content 
- Breach of copyright 
- Defamation or libellous material 
- Annoying spam wall posts

What makes us different?
We already work with some of the biggest brands to provide them with around the clock human moderation services. We don’t just use automatic bots, we manually review all content to ensure nothing slips through the net!  
We actively moderate wall posts, photos, videos and links. We ensure that all users, including children are protected from unwanted content.  
We can provide 24/7 moderation, or out-of-hours to support your existing team.

How to get started?
Prices are dependant on the amount of fans and the volume of the posts created by them. Contact us today and we can calculate your quote instantly, you could beup and running within the hour!

We find this especially intriguing as the CB of CBJL Ltd is Calum Brannan and the JL is James Leavesley, registered at James' home address.  Their main office is at  The Quadrant Business Centre in Coventry, although they seem to list this business as being based at an address which appears to be Calum's flat (43 Boiler House, Electric Wharf, Coventry, CV1 4JU), which must be quite a busy place!

Coincidentally, a post on another blog, by someone named "Anus McFlangyfart" with the text being repetitive use of the word "Anus" was apparently traced back to the Quadrant Business Centre's IP address 82.108.65.77....

inetnum:         82.108.65.72 - 82.108.65.79
netname:         QUADRANT
descr:           Quadrant Business Centre
descr:           Office
descr:           COVENTRY
country:         GB
admin-c:         NC1595-RIPE
tech-c:          EH92-RIPE
status:          ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by:          EASYNET-UK-MNT
source:          RIPE # Filtered

role:            Easynet Hostmaster
address:         Easynet Network Operations Centre
address:         Easynet Group PLC
address:         44-46 Whitfield Street
address:         London W1T 2RJ
address:         England
address:         GB
phone:           +44 20 7900 4444
fax-no:          +44 20 7900 4445
admin-c:         SMK-RIPE
admin-c:         CVK6-RIPE
tech-c:          SMK-RIPE
tech-c:          CL60-RIPE
tech-c:          PPD-RIPE
nic-hdl:         EH92-RIPE
abuse-mailbox:   abuse@easynet.net
mnt-by:          EASYNET-UK-MNT
source:          RIPE # Filtered

person:          Nick Campbell
address:         3 THE QUADRANT
address:         COVENTRY
address:         CV1 2DY
address:         GB
phone:           +44 2476227373
abuse-mailbox:   abuse@uk.easynet.net
nic-hdl:         NC1595-RIPE
mnt-by:          EASYNET-UK-MNT
source:          RIPE # Filtered

So, in the context of:

- Obscene, abusive or intimidating content 

- Defamation or libellous material 
- Annoying spam wall posts

........ it would appear that it is actually everyone else who needs protecting from THEM!!

We're unsure exactly which one of the duo it was who posted this, although one of them is apparently quite mature and sensible and the other one is neither mature, nor sensible, which narrows it down.  However, we are certain that one of the two has a closer affinity than most, perhaps even an obsession with this particular part of the body, due to his sexual preferences (which he makes no big secret about! - Young entrepreneur invites other teens to join network)  although it looks like his proposed venture, described in the article,  (guysconnected.com) was just a bit of hot air, or perhaps it was just another attempt to get publicity!

Mindful of the fact that Calum (apparently) struggles to string a decent sentence together in English, we're also left wondering where he's gathered a talented bunch of individuals capable of speaking over 30 languages and, more to the point, how he's going to pay them, because we understand he's not exactly flush for cash at the moment.  

We're also wondering if Marc Resnick knows that they are using his URL in their screenshots on the website.

Maybe someone should give him a call on 02476 234 737 and ask him, after all they're a 24/7/365 service..... allegedly!