I'd like to point out that, according to Mark in the beginning, TAG was a large part of their business and what they're doing. Now he's saying it's a small part? The backbone to your business model can't be a small part. Downplaying the backbone is an immediate indicator that someone is trying to shift focus.
The value means little to the business? Of course that's a fact, because if the value was $5/tag you couldn't sell it for profit. And you encourage folks to spread the word and raise the value, this is true and makes sense, but it's also not our job to do that.
Sounds like some fluffing has been going on for awhile with the community. I'm finally going to throw some stuff out on the table for everyone to consider. Keep in mind, I have about 3 pages worth of data points along with timelines, but am condensing everything into a few paragraphs to make it easier to digest.
Speculating here, BUT, I think what's going on is simple...First, the rough timeline, and then beyond this the TLDR explanation:
Inception->December: Mark builds TAG up bigtime,
things are established, and straightway the value is stabilized fairly highVery active TAG folks, more than just one apparent "TAG" employee were in the thread originally (now vanished)
No network issues despite the calculated network hashrate being high and growing
People are curious why there's no network hashrate monitor (though you can reverse engineer one somewhat)
December->JanuaryTAG starts climbing in value more, and moreMark announces a business trip and leaves, which makes the value go up even more
Shortly after being airborn, network comes under "some sort of attack", looks like an RPC DDOSLots of technical issues arose suddenly during his absence
Value of TAG dropsMark discourages programmers from discussing what could be wrong, because their "expert developer" has proven the code is perfect
Orphans are rampant, along with previously-confirmed-blocks being orphaned later on
People are still curious why there's no network hashrate monitor (though you can reverse engineer one somewhat)
Mark explained with certainty that POS was causing the issues, and would be removed
The downward trend of TAG value stabilizes, lots of people mining and holding waiting for the "fix"FebruaryThe long awaited "fix" to the problems is put in place
Shortly after, value goes up on the markets as people's confidence increasesSome issues are mitigated, but there's still notable issues
It's discussed among some others, including other coin devs, that POS should be removed and/or old clients should be disconnected
Mark quietly stops talking about removing POS
Value of TAG begins dropping againMark's presence in his thread is sparse, mostly regarding pool OPs complaining about issues
TAG value hits all time lows, but the network difficulty remains stable with more upward trends than downward onesAdditional point for considerationThe known public hashrate doesn't come close to the calculated hashrate, nor the difficulty. This has to mean 3/4 of the network rate is private/unknown.The TLDR version of everything is this: Mark is out to make money, whether it's long term or short term, and he's good at it. Nothing wrong with that, I support that.
With the community value of TAG low, he can buy it up and hoard it for cheap--he has a cheap source. Keep 'hoard' in mind as you read this. Then,
he resells at virtually 3-5x the price (or whatever the case may be) to the retailers, essentially putting it officially "in circulation", with a nice margin of profit. While stability of value makes things easier, the more important thing is the value doesn't increase beyond a certain threshold, otherwise he has to rely on self-mining and deal with that overhead. This means
if the value of TAG begins to encroach upon a certain level, or goes over it, the market value of TAG has to be dropped somehow in order for the business model to be viable.His business model requires a rewards transport mechanism which has fractional value, preferably a mechanism which requires hardly any upkeep or money to keep the momentum going. What better system than a community-mined crypto coin? To supplement and secure the transactions, he also has his own mining farm, either physically and/or has hired some hashpower to do it for him, giving them a cut of the margin.
With this system you want (and need) to build up the business end and other areas, once the coin has pretty much established itself and is being processed by the mining community.
Orphans, network issues and many other things can cause the market value to drop. This is bad for pools/miners. Does it affect the business-end? No, nor will they care, because transactions are occurring regardless. In fact, the lower the market value the better, because the END customer is not in the crypto-world, they're purchasing TAG at a set value with no regard to the market value. It would be like buying bags of Skittles Candy (pic) and selling them individually to unknowing folks, for huge markups, as special happy pills. So when an issue is identified with POS, and the creater/owner of the coin admits there's a problem and says it should be removed, but then doesn't remove it.. that was another interesting point for me to note. If someone had a large hoard of coins, 100k or more, they would be earning 1,500+ with POS. Not much, but still it's "free" coins. So they would get hurt with POS removed.It's interesting to note that the community asked for POS to be removed, but it still hasn't been. Also, remember how part of the problem was to prevent older clients from connecting? That hasn't been implemented either. Gee, that's weird isn't it?Now, think about this. You want to hurt the coin? Mine and dump it. That will settle its' value down low.. down to 0.00000001 even. That's low! But guess what? That doesn't hurt the TAG business model! That's the intrinsic beauty in Mark's system (kudos). That only hurts the mining community's paycheck for doing TAG's work. The TAG owners will still sell that .00000001btc valued TAG for $2. Essentially, the bitcointalk mining community then becomes the super-cheap sweat-shop labor force for the Nike of the Crypto world. If you're fine with that, then that's cool, but i just think it's worth pointing out.
The only thing which hurts the business model is TAG which has a high market value (.002 or more at the time).The system is designed to essentially be exponentially-self-rewarding for its owners. Not the mining community, and not the retailers.In the end, you have a business model which relies on super duper cheap (practically donated) transaction power (hence, the TAG pools), producing coins which are losing value even as I type, which are then resold as a hard unit to customers at a much higher--static--price, helping to line the business' coffers with decent margins. It then makes for a GREAT business to be re-sold, showing large profit margins on paper... perfectly planned and executed venture capitalistic project. TAG worth 1 penny sold for $2? Done. TAG worth a ten-thousandth of a quid sold for $2? Done. You see how that works?I'll leave additional speculation up to everyone else, but I think from a business standpoint, Mark has done quite a job, and should be praised. As to the mining community, if you want to save electricity, mine something else, or everyone needs to set the market value of TAG super high. Everyone could stop transacting TAG and it would continue because with how many coins Mark likely has, and with how few retailers are involved, there doesn't need to be alot of hashpower right now. I'm sure his own farm would work fine.
END TLDR version. 
