News: Shelfari’s Email Invites System
All I can say about Shelfari’s invite system is it’s too f***ing confusing! First off, when I registered, it asked me to enter my gmail account. At first I didn’t trust this site, but since this has been acquired by Amazon itself, I say, go login! After logging in, it showed me all the contacts under my GMail account and everything else was checked. I have gazillions of GMail contacts, and I’m not really sure if I have the “powers” to browse through them and choose which ones don’t need inviting. So, OK, silly me, I clicked “Send Invites” without hesitation, and the next thing I know was I’m sending Shelfari emails to mailing lists I am subscribed to. This Shelfari thing, instead of making me look smart because of the books I already read, made me look like an idiot (I’m lazy, but not idiotic).
Eskwela.com had the same interface, but you really have to check your contacts one-by-one, not “uncheck”. At least the Eskwela eople know how to unmake me like a spammer.
Another bitchy thing was I can’t even stop Shelfari from sending invites to my email addresses, because even if I clicked the invites once, they (Shelfari) still email those addresses I provided them on a regular basis! F***ing gators! Eskwela.com already has this “Re-invite” feature because it’s a big bitch for me to be attacked by my contacts because of spamming.
OK. I might be talking about a small spot from the clean-looking, pages-always-reloading Shelfari, but isn’t Shelfari made to “connect” people, not annoy each other through SPAM-like emails?
September 7th, 2007 at 11:59 am
No wonder. I’ve been getting 3 of these (just from you) daily.
September 7th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Yeah, total bitch pare! I can’t even stop apologizing to the mailing lists I’m subscribed in! Imagine my account flaunting these messages in LinuxJobs! Embarassing… big time!
September 7th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Dave from Shelfari here…
That is disconcerting. Please know that we only send to the people whose names are checked and who you invite, and as it says next to the invite button, we may send them one reminder a few days later. After that we don’t send any further email (from you or from us).
That’s a pretty rough start to Shelfari. Don’t give up on us. The community of readers is really incredible.
Also, if you want to send me any email addresses or domains we should be blocking, we’d love them. We blocked all of the groups, blog posting, lists, and such we could think of, but there will always be millions more.
Thanks,
–Dave
September 7th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
Hi Dave.
I’m sorry for being an @$$ho73. But you see, my problem is I have more than a thousand contacts in Google Mail and mostly are from mailing lists, and being the lazy “gramps” kind-of user that I am, I’d rather say “Oh, I have to really check the guys I really like to invite, what a bitch!” than, “Oh no! I’m receiving hate emails from mailing list geeks because I’m a spammer” or “I was dropped from my mailing list because I send SPAM.”
I think you get my point. Make the default values of each checkbox to “unchecked” (except those who already are in Shelfari) even if you tell me there were a bunch of words printed on that page, because frankly, not all users read lengthy stuff.
On a good note, you do really have an interesting system to connect book lovers like us. We can talk about these books instead of going to Yahoo! Groups which might even be a spinoff of another group, etc.
Don’t worry. I like your site. My only issue is the invites system.
September 8th, 2007 at 9:29 am
With regard to Eskwela.com, you’ve just sent me an invite for the Nth time.
September 8th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
SPAMMER!! BURN SPAMMER BURN!! I got 4 of those invites… thought you were desperate for a reading buddy or something… ummm. ok that’s about it.
September 8th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Actually, just this morning, I got an email from a staffer from an “opinionated website”, claiming themselves to “talk a lot”, saying “I don’t know who you are. Stop spamming me.” Talk about waking up receiving emails like this!
September 11th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Yeah. And getting “eaten” by a “Python” is even worse. http://twitter.com/phrakture/statuses/253072092
September 11th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
Thanks for the link dude! Just to prove that I’m not alone in this…
September 13th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
I’m still getting s*** from my buddies that think I was stupid enough to enter my google password on a non-google site. Shelfari let me down.
September 29th, 2007 at 9:48 pm
funny
November 1st, 2007 at 8:27 am
I’ve just posted about the same thing. It’s a dishonest way of building their user base.