"Twables" repeatedly spams me on twitter, wtf?

Leonard,

Hiding the 'Communication Preferences' link in the footer of your applications page is beyond 'aggressive' in the techniques of outbound outreach. I wish you the best of luck in the pursuit of a +1 K value, but what you've built with FB140 is a spamming bot:



At least with CANSPAM compliant mail I can actually find the 'unsubscribe' links.

With your font end design decisions and response here it sounds like you know exactly what your trying to do. This IMO makes you less a hapless "Web 2.0" entrepreneur and more... just a spammer.

Leonard,

I think you are playing dumb.

As soon as I installed your FB 140 application a full third of my @zack reply stream were suddenly unsolicited messages generated automatically from your service.

Question #1: Is your excuse really that you didn't think users would object to having their @reply stream spammed with unsolicited messages from your service?

IMHO A much better excuse would have been something like "we didn't foresee so much usage and so many messages!"

"Honestly, we didn't realize that people thought of @ messages on twitter in the same way as getting a private email"

-- Leonard Speiser

"We are realizing that Twitter is not really designed to handle the concept of applications that aren’t simply tools for reading and writing tweets, and we fully expect users to question many of the ways that we tie into the system."

-- Leonard Speiser

From the outset you recognized you were in grey area in regards to how aggressive you were being using twitter for outbound (non opt-in) communication. Instead of making a conscientious choice to tread careful and not abuse the relationship you have with customers you opted to set up 8 different twitter accounts that do nothing but send unsolicited messages to your users all day long.

Question #2: Did you maybe think after setting up fb140_4 and fb140_5 you were enabling something twitter was not intended to be utilized for (spamming users)?

In order to use your application I had to type in my user login information for both Facebook and Twitter. Those are the virtual keys to my online reputation castle. While I am as security averse as the rest, I did think twice about using FB 140, but Ev and Tech Crunche's endorsement of your application and the promise of it's utility (it's a good idea!) made me over come my fears of phishing.

While you didn't hijack my accounts you did abuse our (virtual) relationship. I don't trust companies that send me unsolicited information and then purposeful make it hard to opt out. When I said in the original post that I was angry, I was (and obviously still am) angry.

Anyways, lessons learned, I have less faith in Tech Crunch or Twitter's ability to screen their relationships before endorsing products.

Question #3: Did you maybe think that by abusing your relationships with your new-found users you were jeopardizing your own relationships with others that helped promote your company?

That would be nice.

But what would actually be meaningful would be to:

1. Remove your FB140_* twitter spamming acounts


2. Add the 'Communication Preference' link to your top navigation


3. Promise to treat your users respectfully and be more careful in your outbound communication policy going forward

If you do that I will be appeased.