To everyone regarding the “address book” mishap thing and calling people who fall victim to this an “idiot” or whatever…

Bebo crafted this scenario to happen. This is QUITE intentional. It’s not accidental. Calling people names because they fell into a very disguised trap is pretty rude.

If you can’t see that, or you don’t mind, then that’s how you feel. However, for me, I tend to stick with sites who make it VERY OBVIOUS to the user that they are about to pull hardcore schenanigans. That way I can opt-out of them and it saves me grief, thus not causing me to have a poor opinion of the site later.

I have a feeling someone who doesn’t know shit about branding or marketing came up with this “made-for-future-fail” plan. I’m not 100% sure it’s not some desperate attempt for the AOL purchase to recoup some of that money.

Bebo is the bottom of the barrel of the social networks in my opinion for one shining main reason: They are more concerned with acquiring new signees rather than enhancing the user’s experience.

After I got around my 20th email invite from my boyfriend to join Bebo, which stated:

“You will like it. Click it to find out why.”

I clicked the link and filled in my info. To make things easier for me to find quality connections that I *want* to connect with through Bebo they asked if I would like to fill in my Gmail login and pw to scan my friends who were already there. This is a feature I have used many times on other social networks, such as FaceBook, and I trust this protocol when I come across it.

I opted to fill these two items in. I was then taken to a screen where I was shown several of my friends who were on Bebo. I took the time out to remove a few from the list that I wished NOT to connect with, and left the remaining, maybe 5 people there, and Bebo said it would send them requests.

Well they sent those people requests.

Know what else they did? Bebo took liberty to then SPAM every single contact in my Gmail address book who was not already a member of their crappy website, with this message:

“You will like it. Click it to find out why.”

If you are familiar w/Gmail address book, anyone you ever have a simple back and forth with is added to it.

This means if you have ever received an email from your dentist and you replied, he/she is now in there.

The next morning I woke up to find hundreds of auto-responses from everyone from NameCheap.com to an acupuncturist I wrote several years ago, stating “We receive your message and will get back to you as soon as possible.”

I had NO clue or warning Bebo was going to do this. I never gave this type of permission. I would NEVER give this type of permission to any service.

In addition to the embarrassment of inviting the help desk at my web hosting company to join me on Bebo, I also had tons of questions from people, such as my Mom, as to why I liked it, and telling me they would join up later when they got home.

Great.

This is such a breach of trust. Bebo sent out a recommendation on my behalf to hundreds, maybe thousands of people, in which I did not agree with. I would NEVER recommend their service to ANYONE. Making this recommendation in my name is probably one of the most offensive things I’ve ever encountered with a web service of any kind.

The extra added bonus is the trickling in I witnessed of around 25 – 30 of my friends signing up as new accounts.

Rather than improving the user’s experience and removing the feelings of betrayal, embarrassment, and lack of privacy I encountered, Bebo was more concerned with getting in the inbox of those 25 – 30 friends of mine.

With hand firmly placed on forehead in a “doh!” fashion I told my boyfriend what had materialized from his invite to hear the response of,”I invited you to where? What the hell is Bebo?”

He was completely unaware of the invites being sent out, and didn’t even realize he had an account there.

We promptly deleted our accounts and I spent a couple of hours responding to everyone I could with my story.

I still get a random “Who is this” every now and then from that god forsaken Bebo invite, usually from someone I bought a couch from off Craigslist 3 years ago.

Bebo = major suckage

thats http://itsachat.com

check it out!! its new, just launched in august 2007

Very interesting information! Thanks!

Bye