address book abusers
Posted by Otis on November 08, 2007
While this blog is usually used to post new feature announcements, we sometimes use it to get things off our mind. And something has been bothering me lately.
One of our competitors, Shelfari, has been lately engaging in some very underhanded spamming tactics. I don't often like to comment on our competitors, as I like to keep our focus on our own product, but as Shelfari is dangerously close to ruining it all for many of us, I felt compelled to post this.
Shelfari, like Goodreads and just about every other Social Network out there, allows its members to invite friends from their address books. Where they cross the line however, is in tricking their members to invite 900 people when they meant to only invite the 6 that were already members of Shelfari. This has understandably generated a lot of negative press. Tim Spalding, who runs LibraryThing (another, much nicer, competitor), just posted a list of over 50 complaints from bloggers and journalists. This list is not hard to find - just do a Google blog search.
Competitors are supposed to compete, and while we've struggled with staying competitive without resorting to the same tricks, I can hardly blame Shelfari for resorting to a trick that has gotten them a lot of traffic. Looking at Alex, you can even tell when they started doing it. Heck, they aren't the first ones. Rather than compete in the spam-trickery-game, we've been hoping that Shelfari's spammy ways will come back to bite them in the ass. And finally it appears its happening, as this post from Gadgetopia shows.
What really worries me however, is that Shelfari and other address book abusers are ruining forever the conceit of the address book importer. They are teaching people not to trust them, which is a shame because they are a very useful tool for helping people to quickly find which of their friends are on your service. Every social network from MySpace to Facebook to Flickster have address book importers, because they are the only form of a portable social graph we have available.
There have been many smart people brainstorming on better ways, like having a comprehensive, decentralized social graph. Clearly this would be great for consumers, however we need to find economic incentives to make it worthwhile for social networks before it they will all adopt it. Personally, I have high hopes for Google's new OpenSocial API, as if it truly does get adopted by all the major social networks, it will be in a position to do something. Maybe then the days of the address book importers will be over, and consumers will breath a sigh of relief. Until then I think all Social Networks have a responsibility to use them, well, responsibly.
- Otis
While this blog is usually used to post new feature announcements, we sometimes use it to get things off our mind. And something has been bothering me lately.
One of our competitors, Shelfari, has been lately engaging in some very underhanded spamming tactics. I don't often like to comment on our competitors, as I like to keep our focus on our own product, but as Shelfari is dangerously close to ruining it all for many of us, I felt compelled to post this.
Shelfari, like Goodreads and just about every other Social Network out there, allows its members to invite friends from their address books. Where they cross the line however, is in tricking their members to invite 900 people when they meant to only invite the 6 that were already members of Shelfari. This has understandably generated a lot of negative press. Tim Spalding, who runs LibraryThing (another, much nicer, competitor), just posted a list of over 50 complaints from bloggers and journalists. This list is not hard to find - just do a Google blog search.
Competitors are supposed to compete, and while we've struggled with staying competitive without resorting to the same tricks, I can hardly blame Shelfari for resorting to a trick that has gotten them a lot of traffic. Looking at Alex, you can even tell when they started doing it. Heck, they aren't the first ones. Rather than compete in the spam-trickery-game, we've been hoping that Shelfari's spammy ways will come back to bite them in the ass. And finally it appears its happening, as this post from Gadgetopia shows.
What really worries me however, is that Shelfari and other address book abusers are ruining forever the conceit of the address book importer. They are teaching people not to trust them, which is a shame because they are a very useful tool for helping people to quickly find which of their friends are on your service. Every social network from MySpace to Facebook to Flickster have address book importers, because they are the only form of a portable social graph we have available.
There have been many smart people brainstorming on better ways, like having a comprehensive, decentralized social graph. Clearly this would be great for consumers, however we need to find economic incentives to make it worthwhile for social networks before it they will all adopt it. Personally, I have high hopes for Google's new OpenSocial API, as if it truly does get adopted by all the major social networks, it will be in a position to do something. Maybe then the days of the address book importers will be over, and consumers will breath a sigh of relief. Until then I think all Social Networks have a responsibility to use them, well, responsibly.
- Otis
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I just stumbled across Goodreads thanks to Lorelle on Wordpress, have signed up and really like it so far (username Absoblogginlutely) but I baulked at the address book signup thing as I had heard about the Shelfari disaster. As you don't do the same thing that Shelfari does, you may want to put some more explanatory text on the address book page to state that it will check your address book and then give the user the option as to which people will get invited. As it is, I don't think the wording is very clear that you will be doing this. "See which friends in your address book are on goodreads" did not fill me with a lot of confidence.
I've already invited all the people I want to invite from my gmail address, but every time I log in I find your site keeps searching my address book again without asking my permission, then trying to get me to invite more people! I don't think the site should keep going back to my address book - surely one visit was enough.
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