The Zeitgeist

I know that “Internet Time” is supposed to be a hyper compressed version of “real time,” but who knew it applied to “crashing and burning”..?  Apparently not the folks over at Quechup, because they have burned every possible smidgen of goodwill that people could have had towards them; all in about a week.

When you sign up they ask you for your email address book, presumably so they can tell you who in your contacts is already a Quechup member. But, what they really do is SPAM your contacts.  I covered this briefly earlier in the week when blogging about Ross Mayfield’s privacy article, but what’s going on now, days later. is much, much more interesting: The critical question of the day is: How fast can a start up destroy it’s potential for success? The social network space is already insanely crowded (Orkut, LinkedIn, MySpace, and FaceBook being just the most well known, but there are dozens and dozens), and there doesn’t seem to be much to differentiate Quechup from the rest of them in terms of basic functionality. Except of course that in violation of their own terms of use and privacy policies they use your information to send “unsolicited mass mailing or ’spam’ .” Ouch.

Even more interesting is their silence on this issue. They’ve angered tens of thousands (likely more) of people, abused the trust of the people who have registered, and yet, they have nothing to say. To channel Doc Searls & Co… Quechup’s market is apparently based on a monologue, not a conversation. I hope that they do something to address this issue — given their apparent arrogance, I am sure it will be to lash out at their users, or the online user community at large. Hopefully it will be spectacular enough as to present a great case study in what not to do with your startup.