I thought it couldn’t get worse than MySpace
So reluctantly and with a bit of grumbling, I’ve joined the bandwagon of social networking. Years ago I joined StumbleUpon, and I’ve loved it ever since. I never knew it would be so big. When I joined MySpace I thought I’d stop at that. But along came other sites and before I realized it I became a member of a dozen or more social networking sites. I think nowadays MySpace, LinkedIn and a couple other sites are about the only sites that are worthwhile. Don’t get me wrong, I think MySpace sucks but it is still a relatively easy to use website and you can find almost anybody that hasn’t been living under a rock for the past couple years. I like its services but not the website itself, its free so I can’t really complain much. LinkedIn is a must I think if you’re in the tech industry or if you’re looking to network in your professional are. If you ask me, LinkedIn is the job market of the future… its just not there yet.
But with all that aside I had to let you know that it does get worse than Myspace. I recently got “tagged” by two different people. Tagged if you’ve never heard of it, is another social networking site. Similar to MySpace, or Friendster or other ones out there. You sign up and invite friends to join you. But from the moment I got the first invite I began loathing the site. In fact I dismissed the invite. The site is simply and blatantly a piece of sh*t and I urge you not to sign up unless you absolutely have to. Trust me, you don’t have to. You can tell what kind of site it is simply by looking at the e-mail they send you. It says “Joe Schlombo has tagged you. Please respond or Joe may think you said no :(. Notice how they even add the sad smiley face. What a bunch of horsesh*t, trying to play into your emotions to get you to sign up.
Well so I thought, these two people that invited me know better than to join something like this, one of them is even a techie. So I had to investigate further and after a few minutes I discovered how they got my friends to invite me. They use a chain system to get people to sign up and its not only annoying, it is simply shady and used underhanded tactics. When you finally agree to sign up, you are taken through the normal process of giving out your information, and as soon as they got this information then they take you to a page that says “Invite all your friends to Tagged” and they don’t give you an option to do it later or to skip this step. They even go as far as to pull the information out of your gmail account (or whatever other email system you are using) to send tags to your friends. But in the page where you do this, you have not way to opt out. This is what prompted me to write this as a warning to people.
I was smarter than them and simply closed the browser at this point. I then thought, Oh no, my account must be in limbo now because I didn’t finish the process. But I visited the site again and tried to login and my account was fine. So First, say no to Tagged, second, if you do agree because maybe a bunch of your friends are already using it then join but don’t invite other people to join, when you get prompted for this, simply close the browser. Tagged invitations are a burden to your friends and contacts and it makes you look dumb. The site is poorly done, slow and full of advertisement and it offers nothing over the other sites that are much more respectful of your privacy and your friends’ privacy.
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related: social networks, social, member, p2p, Joe Schlombo
I am guilty of signing up on there. I did it for two reasons, one, my sister hates myspace and tagged was the networking site she chose to try out and asked me to join, long story short she lasted not even two months on there as it IS a very crappy site. I also signed up to check it out and because although I kept rejecting the requests they kept coming out of nowhere even after me asking to delete my email address from there. Anyways… just wanted to comment this entry because I must agree with you Tagged really sucks and the weirdos that I came accross on there were pretty freaky.
Well I’m glad there is someone out there that agrees with me. I’m definitely glad you could see through all the crap and realize what a sh*tty site it is. And like I said, Myspace isn’t much better but its not as intrusive. And it actually has risen to the top of the social networking sites for a reason.
- Thanks for stopping by Angie!