Quechup Spam Hysteria? Beware Facebook Risky Email Business
Is Quechup the only “bad guy” in the beware social network invite spam drama unfolding this Labor Day weekend?
Bert Van Wassenhove on the purported “Quechup disaster!”:
One feature is to check who in you address book in in Quetchup, I try it and the system says > no contact present.
The whole thing was not very user friendly so I decide to leave it for what it is. I go back to my mailbox and see about 100 out of office replies … apparently Quechup sent out invitations to join to my complete Gmail address book.
The supposed “disaster,” however was a self-inflicted one, Chris Hambly underscores, while debunking the “mass hysteria” of not so savvy ”early adopters in social media networks”:
No matter what your opinion is on this the fact of the matter is that you should READ what the page says as it is very clear. In any case there is a link which says “I don’t have an address book”!
Now if you are one of the unlucky people who didn’t read that and went ahead and created the account anyway with the address import I can only say you should READ these things clearly in the future, it’s quite simple.
Well what happened is some of the early adopters in social media networks created accounts only to find out a ton of email invites on their behalf had been sent out from their imported address books. This ruffled quite a few feathers and what appeared to happen was a slight hyseteria took place, with many of followers of some of the “influencers” (I do not like that title) “brown-nosing” and all joining in on the Quechup “witch-hunt”.
Now right there is what I dislike most about social media, that mass hysteria, and somewhat blind following, like some kind of religious cult. I saw person after person jump on the “band wagon” of Quechup hatred without first finding the facts, and that scares me, a lot!
What should have happened is each individually should access the situation exactly and not jump to conclusions, use their own brain and not just bite the hook every time, you are not a sheep.
As a closing remark, I do not think Quechup would give a crap at all if they ruffled some feathers of some “influencers”, by now they will have more than enough momentum to build a solid network.
Whose “feathers” were ruffled? Hugh MacLeod, for one. He is “utterly livid” over the Quechup “fucking scumbags.” How so?
Dennis Howlett: No one attaches any blame to you. It got a bunch of folk on the continent last month. I had the same problem ablout 18 months ago with another service. Utterly embarrassing but people are forgiving when they know you’ve been hoodwinked.
Hoodwinked? Not quite. Hambly cites Quechup’s “address import” option instructions:
Congratulations! Welcome to Quechup. Find out which of your friends are already members. Choose the address book with the most contacts and we’ll search for matches so you can add them to your friends network and invite non Quechup members to join you. By inviting contacts you confirm you have consent from them to send an invitation. We will not spam or sell addresses from your contacts.
That is pretty clear in intention, and this is where I stopped during my sign-up. Why did I stop, well I didn’t want to invite anyone without knowing what the system was actually about, I never do that.
What ought to be even clearer, any export of personal email contacts should be considered risky privacy business, anywhere; Facebook, for big example, as I expose in Zuckerberg Message: Facebook Resistance Futile, Billions of Stubborn Email Accounts Targeted:
While the blogosphere applauds Facebook for “opening up, a little,” by enabling Facebookers to email those “stubborn” non-Facebookers directly from within Facebook, the privacy impact on those thoughtful (not stubborn) non Facebookers who risk becoming drive-by Facebookers, is lost in the social graph sauce. READ HOW
ALSO: MySpace is the Anti Facebook: 200 million Friends BEAT Zuckerberg Cliques and Plaxo, Marc Canter Ignore Rights of Stubborn Social Web Silent Majority