Writelife

How to destroy a good idea: Quechup

September 8th, 2007 by Bill

You can only speculate: Are they criminals? Are they stupid? Are they simply business boneheads trying to reach targets and to hell with the consequences? It’s impossible to say unless you work for them but whatever the reasons behind the fiasco that is Quechup, I can say definitively that it is one social networking site you want to avoid at all costs.

They’ve managed to spam everyone in my address book. But I’m not alone. They managed this by first spamming me using someone else’s address book. And heaven knows how many other address books - all without permission, and each spam sent as if it came not from them but the owner of the address book. The spam sent out using my address book was made to look like the invites were sent by me.

And I did not send any invites to anyone.

But this balls up is being written about all over the Internet, from blogs to news sites so there is really no need for me to go on about it. I’ll just throw some links in at the end of this post in case you want to skim through some of them.

However, the article on eWeek.com, Quechup Viral Marketing Irks Members, summarizes where the problem lies pretty succinctly:

The problem is in Quechup’s “check for friends” form, which prompts users to see whether any of their friends are already using the site. After the user enters a password, however, the service then sends a message to all the contacts in the user’s Web-based e-mail accounts—such as Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo—without first asking permission.

It’s also interesting to note that at the bottom of the spam emails Quechup send out (the “invites”), there is this:

You received this because <here they put the purported sender’s name and email address> knows and agreed to invite you … Quechup will not spam or sell your email address - privacy policy.

Hmm. That’s what they say but it ain’t true.

And the point of my headline, “How to destroy a good idea …“? This doesn’t simply affect Quechup and iDate and how people view them, and how they view their brand, it also affects all the other social networks, including the legitimate ones. After all these bogus emails were sent out under my name, the most common response was an expression of gladness at the fact the recipient didn’t trust such things and comments about how they never will or, for those who were duped by these (like me), a determination to never go to such sites or respond to “invitations.”

In other words, the success of social networks is also the ruin of them. Everyone (I mean businesses here) has jumped on the social network bandwagon because of the popularity, including the ill-prepared, the ignorant and the criminal. So the legitimate get lost amid the illegitimate and the inept.

Hence, my title.

Also interesting to note:

Quechup is owned by iDate Corporation and the privacy policy states:

This site is owned and operated by iDate Ltd. Your privacy on the Internet is of the utmost importance to us. At iDate, we want to make your experience online satisfying and safe.

The iDate mailing address is: