This morning I was going through my emails and I saw an invite for a service called “Quechup” – which sounds a lot like LinkedIn, which I use and enjoy. Something about the name triggered one of those Spidey Sense flags, and I did some searching. I recommend doing the same.
What you’ll find is a service that claims to have been around since 2005, but suddenly has taken off spamming people by not making it clear that when you search your address book it is going to email everyone anyway. And yes, they have been around since 2005 – as an online dating service. (Go see for yourself at Archive.org.
So, in short, I’ll watch this some more, but I don’t think I’ll even be browsing this site any time soon. Sorry.
(BTW – over at this post we see someone claiming to be an employee talking about how long their site has been around without mentioning what it was around as. That’s like buying Whitehouse.com (don’t go there from work), turning it into an educational resource, and then claiming to have been around for years without mentioning what you were around as)
Thanks for the heads up.
And speaking of whitehouse.com, I still remember the first time I accidentally went there… in 8th or 9th grade. In the school library. In full view of school staff and my whole class.
I must say it was quite embarassing. ;)