I’m not very happy with Spock today.
I’ve raved about it in other blogs before how great I think it was, even offered Spock invites to my colleagues because I thought it would be useful.
But this morning a colleague came by my desk and told me that Spock has sent invites to his contacts on his behalf. I received one from him too, which I didn’t really understand since I was the one who invited him to Spock. I’m spam-tolerant so I just deleted the invite and didn’t think much of it, but apparently, his contacts were not as forgiving.
I went over to the Spock blog to find out if anyone else was having this problem and found one comment on the problem. The user’s contacts received invites sent on his behalf. Since Spock is relatively new I’m a little more tolerant and was kinda hoping for a response from Spock that went something like “it was a glitch, we’ll fix it.” But apparently, that’s just the way it is. I don’t remember the sign up process anymore, but apparently during the sign up process, Spock will automatically invite all your contacts unless you OPT-OUT of it.
Sorry you overlooked it, was pretty much the response fron the Spock team.
Now I’m wondering if I opted out. Now I’m wondering if my entire address book got invites sent on my behalf.
I understand that Spock isn’t the first to do this. I’m just really irked because I really like Spock and had great expectations for it.
Considering the consequences of spam, I really think that the invite feature should be an opt-in option, not the other way around. I’m sure it’s the same with most people, but my address book contains business contacts as well as personal contacts, as well as people I really don’t talk to anymore for one reason or another.
Now. I don’t send my clients forwarded chain letters or e-mail petitions not to buy gas on a particular day. E-mail has become so formal nowadays that when my client receives something from me via e-mail, it is quite important. It is formal. It’s official.
I like receiving invites to private beta, and yes, even unsolicited ones. But that’s me. Again. High tolerance. I can’t assume the same for everyone else. I know I invite a lot of people to services but I never send unsolicited invites. I will usually do a post with my e-mail on it, asking people to contact me if they would like an invite to something. And then I send. I make people go through the trouble of asking for it because I know that when I invite people, they will get an e-mail with MY NAME on it. And I treat e-mail like it’s golden.
Another irk. When I logged into Spock this morning I found that I had an X amount of “favorites.” I think Spock automatically turned my LinkedIn contacts into my favorites. When I first started using Spock I thought I would use the “favorites” feature as sort of a bookmarking feature. Like “this would be a person of interest later I’ll mark him/her.” Since Spock took the liberty of favoriting people for me, I lost that bookmarking function.
I understand that maybe Spock is trying to automate things but again, that should be an option and shouldn’t be done automatically. I’ve seen people with thousands of LinkedIn contacts. Now if you have thousands of “favorites,” how exactly again are they “favorites?” I’m sure there’s a feature to un-favorite people on Spock, but I add LinkedIn contacts on a regular basis so does that mean after I accept an invitation to connect on LinkedIn, I would then have to go to Spock and un-favorite them?
All that said, I like Spock. I think it’s a great search engine for social media. I just wish it would stop doing things for me.
Hi Lisa,
This is Maia from the Spock Team. I apologize for not being clearer in my earlier communication. The feature to invite all of one’s contacts is, in fact, opt-in. A user has to actively choose to invite their contacts. Based on the small number of comments we’ve recently received, we have already changed the sign-up process so that when you check that box, a warning pops up confirming that this is what the user actually wants to do. We think people may have accidentally checked the box, perhaps mistaking it for the “Terms & Conditions” or another required box they check without thinking. The changes will be reflected in the site sometime next week. Spock does not spam people’s contacts unless we are previously authorized.
For the record, your address book was not invited by us
Spock does automatically populate your Favorites with your contacts from external sites. It is easy to remove someone from your Favorites – just click the star next to their name. We do this for your convenience, so you can find profiles on people you know on Spock. If you remove someone from your Favorites, they won’t show up again.
Feel free to contact me with any more questions or concerns!!
- Maia
Hi Lisa,
The invite contacts has been fixed today. Anyone who goes to sign up for Spock from now on will receive a warning if they check the box to invite all contacts.
Again, we apologize for any inconvenience.
Thanks Maia. That was quick.
While it is positive to see the changes being made to Spock for future users it is still a frustration for me to have to manage the responses from people that received invites on my behalf (even though I didn’t invite them). Further frustration comes from not finding an easy way to opt out of Spock. Getting in was easy………getting out with your information, not so easy.
I looked forward to being a part of this community, now I just want out.
Hi Steve,
Maybe Maia is a better resource for explaining this, from my understanding, Spock isn’t really a community. It’s a search engine for communities like LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.
So if you are on LinkedIn or any other social media, you will be found on Spock. Your Spock account merely enables you to search those communities.
I hope I was correct in my explanation.
There’s so much spam out there, who’s to care where it’s coming from? You almost kind of expect it these days.
Neil, I care. If we were to say post pictures of real life spam artists on the web, they would be dead faster and dirtier than a child molestor in prison. FACT. Even proactive Maia, bless her little fix it soul, it would be ugly, people.
Spam is the numero uno contributor to road rage on the superhighway. Wake up.
And I’m a little surprised in this lop off our leader’s head society, that corporate spam pushers are so accepted by you tech types. WTF? Aren’t viral mediums basically spam? Why aren’t you using your powers for good?
Jane, I think that it depends on one’s definition of spam. It’s kinda like pollution. It’s there.
Viral mediums aren’t really spam because you don’t have to be part of it. No one is being forced to create a profile or network on any of these social media sites. You’re right, though, that it is almost like spam. But then people can unsubscribe from my Twitter or Haiku or Facebook feed anytime. They also have to sign up for it (connect) to receive the updates. They are not being forced fed. So in my book, that’s not really spam.
And this viral thing is being used for good. It is through my community feeds that I learn about new trends, new events, new sites, new products that I would not normally hear about even if I search Google all day and all night. So to me, it’s beneficial.
I also find that I’m getting favorites that I didn’t click. In fact, my least favorite person on spock keeps winding up in my favorites.
I hate spock. The more I deal with it, the more I hate it. But there’s pretty much no way out of it, since it’s being created and populated outside of anyone’s permission.
Jane, my bad. Some people do care. You have a point about the spam artists though. Maybe they just need a little love. Nobody pays any attention to them so they do this.
Therapy.
[...] speaking of tacky…I was talking to Sam and Maia from Spock during the lunch about the trouble I had. As I was walking away I meant to tell Sam “it was nice meeting you, SAM,” but what [...]
You can share those invites on http://www.siteinvites.com to get higher on their waiting lists for other sites.
Pretty neat should check it out
I am so glad that:
1) I mostly conduct my digital life under various personas and pseudonyms on purpose and have done so for decades (I have had Internet access since 1987)
2) When I signed up for Spock.com under my real world identity I *deliberately* skipped the step where you let them have access to your address book
3) My real world identity has no profiles at MySpace, Friendster, FaceBook or any of the other most popular social networking sites
4) My online identities that have such social networking site profiles were for the longest time set to private *before* I added much content to them
5) I am not going to have to be among the thousands of people (especially single women and minors) who have to complain loudly about how my supposedly private MySpace profile shows up in Spock.com searches (especially the tags which can be problematic)
6) I agree with mattumatt above that Spock is not going to make a lot of friends by having compiled their database without prior permission from the individual users of other social networking sites…just wait till all the attorneys out there find out about their personal info being available out there for anyone to see thanks to Spock…let the litigation commence!
I don’t think that Spock is a terrible idea, but it has been executed poorly enough that there will be some ugly problems to come
Anyway good luck to all y’all.
The Vault
Is this the same Maia Bittner who was busy voting up my tags when I was trying to vote them down? Thanks for nothing! It took me forever to get my profile removed, but I got it. I also had not choice but to opt out of every social network because I don’t want my name on this peice of crap ever again.
Here’s one person Spock will never be able to index.
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