Tuesday, May 20, 2008

How not to run a social networking site

With so many social networking sites launching themselves these days (and by the way, am I the only person who thinks that companies jumping on this bandwagon in 2008 are about 2 years too late unless they have something really different to offer?), you'd think they'd try to avoid stunningly obvious, stupid mistakes. Not so, it turns out. I lasted all of 24 hours on a new business-centric networking site (no names, no lawsuits...) because their business plan turned out to be:

1. Get your friends to email you to sign up.
2. Silently sign you up for for daily mass mailings including passing your name onto "trusted third-party affiliates".
3. Don't profit.

To their credit, at least they are smart enough to realize that nobody would opt in to the third-party mailings given the choice. But that's more than offset by being too dumb to realize that when I said that a late-to-the-party social networking site needs to be different, I actually meant better.

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