Friendster Might Not Be So Friendly For Long
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Normally, I have no interest or problem with Friendster. Honestly, they are about as much on my radar as day time TV. But this news about Friendster working with Intellius is rather disturbing.
The official idea behind the partnership seems simple enough: “to provide a more robust and comprehensive user search experience on Friendster and to power people searches originating on Friendster with results from across the web.” But there are some concerns over some of Intellius’ own business practices before this deal.
According to this recent TechCrunch post, Intelius has a questionable history with allegedly “tricking users into long term credit card subscriptions for what have been described as worthless privacy protection products.” Even if there is some question here as to whether this is what is planned with Friendster, just the past lawsuits with Intelius should be enough to get people to stand-up and take notice.
2 Comments
Justen
October 1st, 2009
at 1:43am
Just another instance of the long tradition of monetizing internet services via fraud. Can’t get ‘em to pay for crap that is worth next to nothing? How about tricking them into thinking you have crap that is worth something and getting them to pay for that instead?
Will Sloan
October 1st, 2009
at 2:03pm
Dead on, Justen. I don’t understand why companies/people can’t invest their precious time creating a worthwhile product and earning the trust of it’s target demographic.
I’m on FriendFeed but I find myself using it less and less. I may just bail.