Quechup on spam – viral marketing gone wrong

Posted by jerry on September 3rd, 2007 — Posted in Journal, New media, Technology

Perhaps you are one of the lucky ones who has not yet received a dozen invites from trusted friends about joining the latest social networking site – Quechup. It seems that as part of the signup process Quechup scans your gmail in-box and emails everyone in it. This is not an opt-in option. Fortunately I read the list of ‘benefits’ and found virtually no difference from Facebook – which isn’t (quite) so aggressive – so I didn’t sign up and add to the global spam content.

This is certainly not the way viral marketing is supposed to work – ie it’s not actually meant to be like a virus that self-replicates around the internet – rather it should be about a good meme that others think is a really good idea and feels they want to share it with others – a soort of positive people power.

Instead, the involuntary sharing of Quechup invites seems about a attractive as turning up at a party with the flu and ‘sharing’ it with everyone!

My advice for what it’s worth is to avoid Quechup like the proverbial. I’ll stick to Facebook where I have more control over the process.

And don’t take my word for it – check out the technorati tag cloud on this topic.

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