Apparently People Aggregator is alive. I know this because a few co-workers said that their inboxes are staring to fill with email invites of some sort related to it. The warned me to be on the lookout.
Oh, great. Another piece of social software that allows anyone to spam their friends via e-mail.
Isn't there a better (and by "better" I mean "less annoying") way?
Maybe what we need is an opt-out list that's like the National Do Not Call Registry.
In order to be called a "social" or "web 2.0" company, you need to agree to run a daily import of the opt-out 2.0 database and apply it to your system.
The penalty for non-compliance? You don't get free PR in TechCrunch.
That's my idea for the day. I offer it up royalty free to anyone who wants to make a difference in the inboxes of potentially thousands of annoyed "early adopter" types.
Posted by jzawodn at June 26, 2006 04:21 PM
I've been getting spammed with invites for Y!360 starting a few days ago. I go to the Y! 360 page the invite points me to and there's a list of the hundered of so people on my friend's list, and each one is preselected. If I want to add just one, I must unselect each of the other 99 or so. It's sufficiently annoying that I just ignore them all.
Now you're starting to understand the basic principle of Web 3.0: Anti-Social Software. We don't need systems to invite us to Social Networks, we need Anti-Social Network software to make all those people leave us alone.
Maybe it's time for a social networking meta site ... That aggregates all the networks.
And back we are at the point were all started. The PeopleAggregator is a social network web service and aggregator for networks.
:)
yah - well we don;t have funding - its all paid for byy me and my conuslting business - so we don't quality as Web 2.0.
And we don;t use tHAT term anymore - as it's woned by Tim O'Reilly.
Its Live Web from now on - dude/
Live Web and proud of it.
Jeffrey:
I've heard others complain about that too. I can't figure out why I haven't been spammed by it. Maybe because I don't use 360...
Hi jeremy,
I hate to say this, but yahoo 360 has the worest invite system that I've ever seen. Last week I've got tons of email about how someone from my YM list has added me. When I go to the link in the email, it just dumps me my whole list of friends in yahoo messenger and gives me only option to add all of them. There is not even way to add the people who have invited me already.
:)
I tell ya Jeremy were launching a site on Friday and I am gonna have the programmers rush to add e-mail invites to the system. (Just Kidding) but for some of us with no budgets we have to work every angle we can to get exposure. So seeing that we are not going to spam anyone make sure you check out a different kind of podcasting site on Friday when we launch at Gnomedex www.blubrry.com
That's almost as bad as BlogMad - the "revolutionary" traffic exchange service.
Wow,
And I thought getting invited into a beta was the 'in-thing', what teens would call hip!
But, I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiments Jeremy, although, I must admit, the Registry seems a little far-fetched right now. What is truly bothering all of us is not the Web 2.0 craze but the noisy conversations that have arisen out of it:
http://corporatespices.blogspot.com/2006/06/markets-are-noisy-conversations.html
Any opinions?
Regards,
Shri.
Actually it'd have to be a web service, wouldn't it?
We can't be distributing big lists of emails to any schmuck who wants to "comply".
https://service/email@example.com can return 'BLOCK' or 'NO INFO'. Compliant services run a check every so often on each email address they have stored.
Me, I think it's a good idea.
Jeremy,
This email is to inform you that one of your friends has added you to the new website stopbuggingtheshitoutofme.com. This website allows you to add yourself to the "do not invite" list of thousands of social network sites around the world.
Since you know there's only six degrees of separation between the social networking sites you use and all the others it's only a matter of time before you've been invited to join them all.
By joining our site you can limit which sites can send you email and when. We'll send you a weekly email reminder of your settings and useful tips for managing your contacts.
By signing up for this service you also agree to allow us to send you emails with special offers from third parties we know you'll appreciate.
--
Mike
John that can be automated to validate a spammer's list and make a seperate "valid" list that they'll just sell at a premium like some unscrupulous folks do when you try to unregister from their lists.
The only way I could see of making this work would be quite expensive bandwith with. The service would have to route all the email itself. You send a message to the service saying email this address and the service decides whether to email or not.
Of course this also has potential for abuse (mail bombs from anonymous spammers for example) but that can be regulated more easily than returning block or no info.
Spam these days is the kiss of death in a word of mouth social network called the Internet. I am also opting out of Techcrunch because the site is going downhill fast. The editorial is not real editorial.
David:
Yes, there is one. You need an invite to get on it though.
iSANGO! aims to be your site of choice for planning and booking holiday
activities & excursioand find the best destination for those activities.http://www.isango.com
The real problem (IMAO) with the social network sites is that they are based on the principle of adding status (,privilege, functionality) based on having buddies. This makes one go out of their way to turn 'contacts' into 'friends' - people that the person would never socialize with under any other circumstances. I've been building a social site without buddy lists under the premise of letting people meet and interact on their own. I can't get anybody to use it. The reward system for adding new members (read: buddies) is the viral component of these sites. The only way to talk to interesting people is to make lots of usually uninteresting friends that will introduce you. If you take this reward system away, most of them would die. Perhaps they will anyway. As others have observed, there seems to be a trend toward consolidation into one global buddy list.
One of the reasons we ask for your e-mail address is so that we can communicate with you and possibly send you the latest information about RateItAll. You can opt-out of receiving correspondence from us by selecting that option when you register. If you don't want to hear from us, we promise to leave you alone! Many of our members, however, enjoy getting news from us and being informed of special promotions or opportunities.
The reality is -- most people don't mind; a few people mind very much. I certainly find linkedin very useful and interesting, for instance. and then there's the yahoo/flickr (ahem) "invite" function for groups... (chorus: "BUT THAT's DIFFERENT!!!!!!!")
The solution, I guess, is to blackhole anything from the domain of one of these people aggregators as soon as you see mail from it (if you care to).
too bad our email box doesn't have a robots.txt, no?
It just sounds like a disaster in the making - website that collect thousands of already annoyed peoples email addresses and opens that list up for anyone to access in the hope that people will use it as a list of people not to annoy.
