I’m intrigued, and slightly depressed, at how social networking sites deteriorate so quickly into what are little more than scams. I think it started about a year ago, when a number of sites started pulling the stops out to build up membership.
Now, it seems, it’s all about the money. Take Quechup, for example, which has never had a very good reputation, though some say it’s undeserved. I don’t think anyone would try to argue that now.
I opened an account at Quechup about a year ago, and left it, with no friends. no connections, no activity (a bit like my real life.) I didn’t get anything until last month. In the past month I’ve received more than 30 messages. All of them from people I don’t know; all of them, from the subject line, spam:
So what’s the scam, then?
Well, if you’re fool enough to open one of these messages, that’s your limit. Suddenly your inbox looks like this:
The message is basically that you can’t open any messages until you upgrade your membership:
Upgrading, of course, costs. Not a lot, but if you’re curious to find out who’s been scamming you, sorry, flirting with you, you have to cough up:
My question is this: Who is behind the spam in my inbox?
Admittedly, my profile is a bit provocative:
Still. One can’t help feeling that either the spam is being allowed by Quechup as a money-making exercise, or, the only other explanation I can think of, it’s spamming its members with silly messages in the hope they’ll be curious enough to upgrade and read them.
Either way, it’s a social network that’s dead from the neck up.
Sad, really.
