I’m seeing some referrals from this LiveJournal post by a member of the team behind Librarything regarding Shelfari’s unethical spamming strategy. When I wrote about Shelfari’s “confusing and deceptive” sign-up process last week, I did consider at the time that I was over-reacting, but now I see what a widespread problem Shelfari has caused. The Librarything Ideas Blog has gathered 51 similar blog posts on the topic. Mostly angry/annoyed users who accidentally spammed all their business contacts, listservs and long dead relations. The writer also makes allegations of more unethical practice by the Shelfari team:
We respect our competitors with one exception: the site “Shelfari.com.” We have always spoken our mind, so here’s a piece of it: Shelfari has gained traction by engaging in unethical practices, including astroturfing (posting on blogs pretending to be users, not employees*) and putting out press releases about how they invented the idea. But the worst has been their spamming campaign.
Astroturfing is a practice I’m familiar with, although I had never heard the term before – I think it might be illegal, but it is definitely “evil” (in the Web 2.0 sense). This spamming campaign is plain stupid, regardless of how many new users it brings in. With bad press like this, Shelfari surely have no choice but to change their policy and apologise to their users.
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