YEAH FRIENDSTER IS ANNOYING

Earlier this week I got a couple emails from friends replying to "my email" about an invite to Friendster. Hmmm... I never sent out an invite to them and Friendster never notified me about this effort on my behalf. First, one of them was already in my Friendster network. Second, one of them didn't want to participate in these social networks.

What Friendster did is not cool. Obviously, in the first situation, Friendster sent the invite to another email that my friend used and which I invited him through over two years ago. I know that they are desparate to try to get people back into their network and to increase their numbers, but this is not the way to do it. More from CNet:

Friendster recently sent a mass e-mail to try to make new friends for its social network. Instead, it made some enemies.

The one-time hot spot dug deep into its network to pull out the e-mail addresses of people who didn't initially respond to friends' invites to join the online social network a year or more ago. The e-mails implied they were coming from a friend when, in fact, they were being sent by the company.

The e-mails, which went out during the last two weeks, show just how tough the competition is getting for Friendster as it battles growing online giant MySpace.com.

Some of the vocal Web community responded by calling the mass e-mailing spam.

"I could think of about 10 different ways for Friendster to improve itself, but spamming those who didn't care to join in the first place isn't one of them," said Adam Finley. (full article)