One thing I’m actually enjoying about the surging popularity of Facebook—at least among the people I tend to know—is that it serves as a way to reconnect with old friends and acquaintances. I get a slow and steady stream of contact from people I’m glad to hear from.
A two-year-old social network called Quechup seems to have developed a new twist on the market: putting you back in touch with people you never want to speak to again.
For example, it recently enabled Liz Murray to get an e-mail from her ex-boyfriend’s mother.
“I wish I were kidding,” Ms. Murray said in an e-mail to me.
Quechup, in fact, helped me reconnect to Liz, who had approached me about a potential article a month ago. On Monday, I got an e-mail from her inviting me to join “Quechup… the social networking platform sweeping the globe.”
Indeed, e-mail from Quechup is in fact sweeping the globe, angering people wherever it goes. The company has made a subtle switch to a feature common to sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. Those sites offer to scan your e-mail program (like Outlook) or Web e-mail (like MSN Hotmail) to check which of your contacts are already members. Some, in a second step, also ask whether you want to send an e-mail inviting those who aren’t members to join.
Several weeks ago, Quechup appears to have introduced a similar feature, but in a way that got many, many people to send invitations to everyone in their address books.
“I got an invite that appeared to come from a friend of mine,” Giovanni Rodriguez wrote to me explaining how she came to invite me to join Quechup too. “I don’t remember signing up, but I must have. Last night I got a flood of e-mail from people on my contacts lists. Looks like Quechup poached my address book on Google mail.”
Quechup has been around for a few years and appears to be a dating-centric site in the United Kingdom, with some features focused on mobile phones. It is offered by iDate, a small Las Vegas company that is far from the technological mainstream.
The company’s Web site says its stock is traded on the Pink Sheets, home of small illiquid stocks, but the last trade listed was in 2005. IDate’s most recent financial statement filed with the Pink Sheets market is also from 2005, and shows that the company had so few assets that its accountants questioned whether it could continue as a going concern. The report said the company had sold $500,000 worth of stock but only $75,000 had been paid for yet. The remaining $425,000, it hoped, would fund its operations.
The company’s main telephone number is answered by voice mail. I left a message for its chief executive, Mark Finch, and sent him an e-mail. I have not received a reply.
Earlier this week, InfoWorld columnist Robert X. Cringley did hear from an iDate executive after he posted comments about the Quechup e-mail. The executive said that the company has changed some aspects of its system, but he did not provide details.
What to make of all this? First of all, any interesting new service online will attract people trying to exploit it, by offering marginal copycat services, or worse. And in a market when new sites are cropping up all the time, it’s hard to tell which ones are legitimate. With all the personal information that is now available instantly online, there’s no end to the embarrassment that can be caused.
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