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December 12, 2007

Spoke.com, a social 'notwork' according to some

Spoke.com logo

Yesterday, a co-worker asked me if I was familiar with the social network Spoke.com. When I told her I'd never heard of it she seemed a bit surprised. Priding myself on knowing anything and everything conversational media marketing related, I immediately checked it out.

Spoke bills itself as the "open network for business people" where a member can have access to "40 million people at over 2.3 million companies via email, phone, postal address or your personal network."

After reviewing the site for a few minutes, I did something very Web 2.0. I asked my Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn networks if they had heard of Spoke and what their impressions were. That's when I learned "the rest of the story."

One respondent to my query said...

"I am personally boycotting Spoke. They utilize some sort of technology to cobble together information about you that may or may not be accurate.

At least several months ago, I registered in order to verify what it was saying about me and it wouldn't let me edit the profile it had built. They told me they were working on this.

When I asked them to delete the profile, they insisted it wasn't me. My name is pretty unique and the information contained in the profile was too close to home for it to be anyone else. So Spoke is a big no no in my book."

Another sent me a link to a post titled Spoke.com is Evil. The blogger, Phil Yanov, begins the post by saying, "Spoke.com has built a scheme to capture and then sell the personal contact information of practically everyone connected via e-mail. The plan is genius -- evil genius."

In fact, a on the term "Spoke.com" shows Phil's post appearing as the 2nd return just beneath a link to the company's Web site.

Google_spoke_2

Further down the page is a post from Boing Boing which says Spoke is "selling your friend's Outlook address books." (ouch!).

Look, I have no personal axe to grind where Spoke is concerned. At this point, I've not tried the service, so any opinions I've formed come second hand. However, I do have an axe to grind with any service, whether it be Spoke, Facebook, or whomever, that refuses to respect my privacy and that of my contacts.

Word-of-mouth is powerful, and people do respect the opinions of others like themselves. Considering what I've read from the sources cited above, I won't become a Spoke member anytime soon.

Bottom line:  Spoke has a problem and it's one they brought upon themselves. Caveat emptor.

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