*^&!@ Invitations!
Fresh when it gets here from
Julie Barrett
Thursday, July 3, 2008
I've had several invitations to social networking services in the past few days, two from the same person for the same service. One invitation told me I had a free gift. Oh, you want to SEE what your gift is? Hand over all your personal information. We're not going to tell you how this service works or how to check it out first. Just sign up for an account. Trust us.
Wrong.
I won't name the social networking site, but I'll name another that's got me ticked: Classmates.com. My high school decided to use that site to manage their reunion. I signed up for a free membership. Now I'm getting spammed with messages telling me that people looked at my profile or left a message on my profile. All I need to see 'em is a premium membership. Sorry, but no. I've read of too many problems with their service and how difficult it is to cancel. Perhaps if I knew who left a message on my profile, it might entice me to think about signing up. But just a generic "someone" isn't gonna cut it. Knowing my old classmates, the message was probably an insult. So why would I want to pay for that?
Every time I sign up for a social networking site, I'm asked if I want to scan my gmail and other online address books and spam my friends. No thanks. Some of the people are business contacts, and some are very casual acquaintances. I'm not sure who among my friends would be interested in a particular service. I'd rather send invitations one at a time. Or, preferably, ask my friends first. Sorry, but it just seems tacky to spam my casual and business contacts with invitations to web sites they may have absolutely no interest in.
Why would I want to join in a political discussion group with someone I barely know, and risk ticking off if we don't see eye-to-eye on some issue? Yep, I've been spammed for political social networking sites, TV sites, movie sites, darn near everything. I've signed up for some, but most I don't care about. I only have so much time in the day and I can't keep up with the sites I do try to use often. FriendFeed has been a big help in consoldating things, but it still has problems. For example, it won't connect to my Good Reads account because I have an author account. Authors read, too!
Let's make this simple: If you are in a social network or belong to a web site that you think I might find interesting, let me know personally. If I'm interested, then I'll ask you to send me an invitation - or give you my username if I'm already on the service. That way I can be on the lookout for the invite. Sometimes they end up in the spam folder and I may not see them for days if at all. Do this for your friends, too. Ask first. It's the polite thing to do.
Now, if you discover I'm on a site that you're on, please do the "friend" thing. If you're using a nickname that I might not recognize, please drop me a line so I'll be sure to reciprocate. No, I don't friend everyone. And no, that's not terrible. Allow me to give you an example: Someone on a photo sharing site wanted to swap pictures with me. I looked at the person's stream and it was all NSFW pictures. Not artistic nudes (which I don't mind at all), but amateurish snapshots of girls and their boobs. No, thank you. Besides, even if I were into that kind of thing, I don't think there's a wide angle lens made that would take in my sagging chest area. ;-) I reciprocate darn near evey request on photo sharing sites, but that experience taught me to check out the photo stream of the party making the request first.
Enough of the rant, although this did remind me of another subject I want to bring up soon: How much self-promotion is too much? I know I've crossed the line, much to my everlasting regret. I suspect the answer may vary, and I look forward to an interesting conversation in the comments trail.
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Technology
Filed under: Technology
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