Quechup: The Social Networking Platform Sweeping the Globe (Via Spam)

Quechup.com, a social networking site owned and operated by iDate, is taking a unique approach to expanding its user base. According to a growing number of complaints, the site is supposedly scanning new users' address books and then spamming everyone with an invite.

Irate Quechupers say that if a friend (or simply someone whose address book you reside in) signs up, you will in turn automatically receive an e-mail from that person inviting you to join. The trickery supposedly occurs when you then choose to go through a similar sign up process. The service asks if you'd like it to automatically check to see if anyone in your address book is already a member. Allowing this to happen sends everyone in your contact list an "invitation," too. Needless to say, this isn't going over very well. In addition to spending significant amounts of time sending out apologies (and warnings) to their contacts, some have even started contacting iDate's attorneys. Our own calls in to iDate were not immediately answered.

Update 9/4: Quechup got back to us late this afternoon and said it is currently preparing an official statement and running it by the company lawyers. In the mean time, a spokesman pointed Wired News to an employee blog posting that attempts to make sense of the "confusion." While not an official company statement, Quechup does say that the post provides some insight into the situation and the thoughts of those who work at the company. More details below.

What follows are a few relevant portions from that post:

Quechup has had the "check who you know" option since mid 2005, before many other social networking sites had similar options. It has always operated in the same way on Quechup, has always been optional with a link to skip it and has always carried the explanatory text. The statement of use and how it works were placed directly on the page rather than hidden the terms and conditions or privacy policy as many users do not read them despite having to tick a box stating "I have read and I agree to the Terms and Conditions.

The system has worked with few incidences of confusion as to what is entailed since that time. Recently with the growing popularity of social networking sites a "standard" as to how these features work seems to have emerged and the standard is different from how the feature works on Quechup. This causes problems with users expectations.

The employee goes on to admit that while the site may have gained a few extra users from the unintended invites going out, "these are out weighed by dissatisfied users who feel their expectations haven't been met." As such, the Quechup development team is "re-developing the system" to be inline with those pesky standard methods alluded to earlier. So first blame Quench users for not reading privacy policies and the terms and conditions, and then blame other social networking sites for changing the damn standard invite model. I like it!