I am one of the founders of flixster. I happened upon your article via technorati.
As a social community on the web, we take issues of email privacy and permission very seriously. Obviously i am saddened by the way your article describes us. Let me clarify a couple things...
1. We do allow users to access common web-address books to select friends to invite. The whole point of flixster is sharing movie ratings with friends - so making it easy to invite people is very important for us. (This is also incredibly common practice around the web - see yelp/facebook/myspace and many others that also offer it. Plaxo actually offers a popular widget to allow any site to offer this feature).
2. We don't do anything tricky or misleading. The invite friends screens are all clearly explained (visible even in your slightly fuzzy screenshots) and to actually send anything the user must click a button labelled "send invitations" on a screen with their friends names and a list of checkboxes.
2. We use the user's credentials only to retrieve the contact list and then do not store them in any way. We absolutely don't do anything malicious or affect their account in any way.
3. The user is then ALWAYS given the list of contacts and asked to select whom to invite. We do not invite anyone they do not select. Of course we want people to invite friends to come try our site - but it absolutely does not benefit us to send invites they didn't intend and end up with angry users.
4. Once registered, users can control their settings on every single email we send - from weekly movie summaries to new friend requests. If you choose, you can receive no email from us at all.
5. We never sell, rent or buy email addresses from anyone. We are a small company. The intro to our terms of service was intended to be funny. In no way does it reflect us taking privacy issues lightly - which is exactly why we wrote our privacy policy in such clear terms.
Anyway, if you have any questions or want to discuss with me, drop me a note at the email above. i appreciate that your efforts are to help protect people from malicious or dangerous sites - a noble endeavor - i'm really sorry that you felt like our site fell into that category.
One of the Co-founder's of Flixster posted in the article's comments. Since many wont even read the article let alone the comments here it is:
Hi Anne,
I am one of the founders of flixster. I happened upon your article via technorati.
As a social community on the web, we take issues of email privacy and permission very seriously. Obviously i am saddened by the way your article describes us. Let me clarify a couple things...
1. We do allow users to access common web-address books to select friends to invite. The whole point of flixster is sharing movie ratings with friends - so making it easy to invite people is very important for us. (This is also incredibly common practice around the web - see yelp/facebook/myspace and many others that also offer it. Plaxo actually offers a popular widget to allow any site to offer this feature).
2. We don't do anything tricky or misleading. The invite friends screens are all clearly explained (visible even in your slightly fuzzy screenshots) and to actually send anything the user must click a button labelled "send invitations" on a screen with their friends names and a list of checkboxes.
2. We use the user's credentials only to retrieve the contact list and then do not store them in any way. We absolutely don't do anything malicious or affect their account in any way.
3. The user is then ALWAYS given the list of contacts and asked to select whom to invite. We do not invite anyone they do not select. Of course we want people to invite friends to come try our site - but it absolutely does not benefit us to send invites they didn't intend and end up with angry users.
4. Once registered, users can control their settings on every single email we send - from weekly movie summaries to new friend requests. If you choose, you can receive no email from us at all.
5. We never sell, rent or buy email addresses from anyone. We are a small company. The intro to our terms of service was intended to be funny. In no way does it reflect us taking privacy issues lightly - which is exactly why we wrote our privacy policy in such clear terms.
Anyway, if you have any questions or want to discuss with me, drop me a note at the email above. i appreciate that your efforts are to help protect people from malicious or dangerous sites - a noble endeavor - i'm really sorry that you felt like our site fell into that category.
Sincerely,
Joe G
This isn't new, it's done by almost every social network. As long as it doesn't automatically spam your entire address book it's a perfectly acceptable feature.
The "Six Degrees Patent," #6,175,831, was sold for $700,000 to LinkedIn
and Tribe.net in 2003. It was supposed to be the social networking patent. Can
anyone that understands these things compare the two and explain the differences?
Yahoo wont change the name. Unlike Konfabulator and Oddpost, which were acquired for their technology, Del.icio.us, like Flickr, was acquired for its community. The name is an important part of the community. I do suspect that eventually Yahoo will merge logins with Del.icio.us like they did with Flickr, and that Del.icio.us data will find its way into other Yahoo services, but other than that I think Yahoo will be hands off and support Joshua Schachter's vision of what the site should be.
Yahoo will also soon be launching a new version of Yahoo Mail which will include AJAX/DHTML tech they got from their purchase of Oddpost, RSS, an API and additional design updates.
The current generation of Yahoo Mail is old tech, so of course it takes more clicks to do things than it does in Gmail. However, the new generation of Yahoo Mail is in private beta right now and it has all the AJAX/DHTML goodness that Gmail has and more. It should be in public beta soon.
I wonder if Jesse James Garrett, the person who coined the term AJAX, is surprised how fast and widespread the adoption of the term and it's effects have been.
This would be insightful if not for the fact that Oscar DVD screeners do get leaked and are released by groups on to the Internet every year. It's not as impossible as you think.
I hate when Google forces me to download and install their products... Oh wait, they don't. Everything released by Google is optional, don't use their products/services if you don't like their terms.
Tivo must send your credentials when getting guide data so they can check if your account is in good standing. They say the data they collect is stored anonymously. If, for some reason, you do not trust them, then you can choose not to use their service.
What TiVo collects, and what they do with it, are all spelled out in their TiVo Privacy Policy. TiVo does allow you to opt out of these collections if you want, by calling them and requesting it.
What spying? One of the main selling points of Tivo is its recommendations. To generate those recommendations Tivo must know what you watch. This is not done in secret, it's a feature of the service. If this is not something you want, then don't buy a Tivo.
They don't plan to make money from Skype, they plan to make money from the increases in buying and selling they hope the integration of Skype will bring.
This feature is not going to be used by, or marketed to, the common seller or buyer. It will be used by, and marketed to, those selling and buying high-end goods like cars, houses and luxury goods where voice communication actually makes sense.
Slashdot Mirror
All the 37signals sites, Penny Arcade, Twitter, all the 43things sites, i'm in like with you, and Jobster are a few.
Actually, not. People forgot that Semel was once heralded as the savior of Yahoo.
Ignore the bad formatting:
Hi Anne,
I am one of the founders of flixster. I happened upon your article via technorati.
As a social community on the web, we take issues of email privacy and permission very seriously. Obviously i am saddened by the way your article describes us. Let me clarify a couple things...
1. We do allow users to access common web-address books to select friends to invite. The whole point of flixster is sharing movie ratings with friends - so making it easy to invite people is very important for us. (This is also incredibly common practice around the web - see yelp/facebook/myspace and many others that also offer it. Plaxo actually offers a popular widget to allow any site to offer this feature).
2. We don't do anything tricky or misleading. The invite friends screens are all clearly explained (visible even in your slightly fuzzy screenshots) and to actually send anything the user must click a button labelled "send invitations" on a screen with their friends names and a list of checkboxes.
2. We use the user's credentials only to retrieve the contact list and then do not store them in any way. We absolutely don't do anything malicious or affect their account in any way.
3. The user is then ALWAYS given the list of contacts and asked to select whom to invite. We do not invite anyone they do not select. Of course we want people to invite friends to come try our site - but it absolutely does not benefit us to send invites they didn't intend and end up with angry users.
4. Once registered, users can control their settings on every single email we send - from weekly movie summaries to new friend requests. If you choose, you can receive no email from us at all.
5. We never sell, rent or buy email addresses from anyone. We are a small company. The intro to our terms of service was intended to be funny. In no way does it reflect us taking privacy issues lightly - which is exactly why we wrote our privacy policy in such clear terms.
Anyway, if you have any questions or want to discuss with me, drop me a note at the email above. i appreciate that your efforts are to help protect people from malicious or dangerous sites - a noble endeavor - i'm really sorry that you felt like our site fell into that category.
Sincerely,
Joe G
One of the Co-founder's of Flixster posted in the article's comments. Since many wont even read the article let alone the comments here it is: Hi Anne, I am one of the founders of flixster. I happened upon your article via technorati. As a social community on the web, we take issues of email privacy and permission very seriously. Obviously i am saddened by the way your article describes us. Let me clarify a couple things... 1. We do allow users to access common web-address books to select friends to invite. The whole point of flixster is sharing movie ratings with friends - so making it easy to invite people is very important for us. (This is also incredibly common practice around the web - see yelp/facebook/myspace and many others that also offer it. Plaxo actually offers a popular widget to allow any site to offer this feature). 2. We don't do anything tricky or misleading. The invite friends screens are all clearly explained (visible even in your slightly fuzzy screenshots) and to actually send anything the user must click a button labelled "send invitations" on a screen with their friends names and a list of checkboxes. 2. We use the user's credentials only to retrieve the contact list and then do not store them in any way. We absolutely don't do anything malicious or affect their account in any way. 3. The user is then ALWAYS given the list of contacts and asked to select whom to invite. We do not invite anyone they do not select. Of course we want people to invite friends to come try our site - but it absolutely does not benefit us to send invites they didn't intend and end up with angry users. 4. Once registered, users can control their settings on every single email we send - from weekly movie summaries to new friend requests. If you choose, you can receive no email from us at all. 5. We never sell, rent or buy email addresses from anyone. We are a small company. The intro to our terms of service was intended to be funny. In no way does it reflect us taking privacy issues lightly - which is exactly why we wrote our privacy policy in such clear terms. Anyway, if you have any questions or want to discuss with me, drop me a note at the email above. i appreciate that your efforts are to help protect people from malicious or dangerous sites - a noble endeavor - i'm really sorry that you felt like our site fell into that category. Sincerely, Joe G
The article makes it sound that way but it's not the case. They do prompt you to select which contacts to send an email to.
This isn't new, it's done by almost every social network. As long as it doesn't automatically spam your entire address book it's a perfectly acceptable feature.
Because MySpace doesn't allow javascript. Using the movie gets around the filters.
They are telling everyone to upgrade, that's how they know.
The "Six Degrees Patent," #6,175,831, was sold for $700,000 to LinkedIn and Tribe.net in 2003. It was supposed to be the social networking patent. Can anyone that understands these things compare the two and explain the differences?
It's not a hoax, the Times in the UK verified it. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3223-18240 63,00.html
Yahoo wont change the name. Unlike Konfabulator and Oddpost, which were acquired for their technology, Del.icio.us, like Flickr, was acquired for its community. The name is an important part of the community. I do suspect that eventually Yahoo will merge logins with Del.icio.us like they did with Flickr, and that Del.icio.us data will find its way into other Yahoo services, but other than that I think Yahoo will be hands off and support Joshua Schachter's vision of what the site should be.
You should. Yahoo has refocused itself and is starting to be a serious competitor to Google. Things Yahoo has done recently:
Partnered with Six Apart to pre-install Movable Type on their small business hosting
Purchased Del.icio.us
Launched Yahoo Answers
Launched Yahoo Shoposphere
Launched a new version of Yahoo Maps
Launched Yahoo Blog Search
Launched Yahoo Podcasts
Purchased Konfabulator
Launched Yahoo My Web 2.0
Purchased Flickr.com
Yahoo will also soon be launching a new version of Yahoo Mail which will include AJAX/DHTML tech they got from their purchase of Oddpost, RSS, an API and additional design updates.
The current generation of Yahoo Mail is old tech, so of course it takes more clicks to do things than it does in Gmail. However, the new generation of Yahoo Mail is in private beta right now and it has all the AJAX/DHTML goodness that Gmail has and more. It should be in public beta soon.
I wonder if Jesse James Garrett, the person who coined the term AJAX, is surprised how fast and widespread the adoption of the term and it's effects have been.
This would be insightful if not for the fact that Oscar DVD screeners do get leaked and are released by groups on to the Internet every year. It's not as impossible as you think.
Flock is not for you, and really is not for most Slashdotters.
TechCrunch (a Web 2.0 blog) has done a couple profiles on Flock. Check them out if you want more details on the product.
I hate when Google forces me to download and install their products... Oh wait, they don't. Everything released by Google is optional, don't use their products/services if you don't like their terms.
It's also being reported that AOL has also made overtures about a possible sale to Google.
Tivo must send your credentials when getting guide data so they can check if your account is in good standing. They say the data they collect is stored anonymously. If, for some reason, you do not trust them, then you can choose not to use their service.
You beat me to it. =)
What TiVo collects, and what they do with it, are all spelled out in their TiVo Privacy Policy. TiVo does allow you to opt out of these collections if you want, by calling them and requesting it.
What spying? One of the main selling points of Tivo is its recommendations. To generate those recommendations Tivo must know what you watch. This is not done in secret, it's a feature of the service. If this is not something you want, then don't buy a Tivo.
They don't plan to make money from Skype, they plan to make money from the increases in buying and selling they hope the integration of Skype will bring.
This feature is not going to be used by, or marketed to, the common seller or buyer. It will be used by, and marketed to, those selling and buying high-end goods like cars, houses and luxury goods where voice communication actually makes sense.