I’m sure you’ve all received messages inviting you to join SMS.ac (which stands for “Short Message Service, Always Connected”). I’ve received a dozen or so messages from four different people (three I knew, one I didn’t) asking me to join the service. While it appears to be a company successfully using viral marketing to attract members (30 million on six continents) people are increasingly annoyed over the way it is done. The problem is expressed in this paragraph:
“I received an e-mail inviting me to join SMS.ac, which I would normally ignore, but it was from someone who’s judgment I trust,” blogger Joi Ito posted earlier this year. “I clicked through the sign-up process without finally completing it, but unwittingly gave the service access to my MSN IM information.”
Even though Ito didn’t finish the sign-up process and didn’t join the service all his contact received information. If they were like the one’s I received they would have given the impression Ito had joined the service and was eager for his friends to join. Whether this is spam or not is debated, but I say “Yes, it is spam”, at least when the person doesn’t join. Referal programs are fine, but they have to be legitimate referals. If you trick someone into giving you access to your contacts and then send the contacts messages without the persons consent, that is spam. Especially if you keep doing it under the guise of “reminders”.
“There’s a cycle that has to happen” with premium text messaging, said Greg Wilfahrt, executive vice president and co-founder of SMS.ac. “There has to be an education and desensitization process for users. At some point, (users) get comfortable with that.” Apparently the companies also have to be educated as to what is reasonable behaviour. Viral marketing is a good and successful way to promote a product or service, but it has to be done with people’s permission or the public will begin to ignore it…
Comments have been disabled for this post