Viadeo - a (serious?) Xing competitor - using spam?
Update: Viadeo has now removed the unfriendly comment from their website on the link posted in the comment below. Here’s the google cached version of the comment:
Viadeo spam
I have no desire to become a member of Viadeo. I currently receive on the order of several dozen requests daily: **SOMEONE_I_DON’T_KNOW** invites you to join the Viadeo network Hello, I have the pleasure to invite you to join me on Viadeo, the business and social networking website that works. Over the past 2 years, over 1,250,000 people have already joined Viadeo and the network is expanding at over 3,000 new members every day! - etc.- Despite several emails addressed to abuse@viadeo.com …
None - California
Published by No Spam
Published on 02 August 2007 - 2 people interested
I also found this link: http://twitter.com/tv/statuses/298470912, confirming the issue.
I just received the following email:
Sophie Plantieux invites you to join the Viadeo network
Hi,I’d like to invite you to be part of my Viadeo network.
I use Viadeo to manage my professional contacts and get in touch with other people in my industry. Give it a look : it has paid off for me.
Kind regards,
Sophie Plantieux
Registration only takes a few minutes !
I want to joinPlease join now by clicking on the above link.
PS: By inviting your contacts to join your network on Viadeo you increase your networking opportunities exponentially. Some Internet Service Providers deactivate html links. If this is your case, to accept this invitation simply copy and paste this address in your Internet browser:
http://www.viadeo.com/action/index.jsp?actionId
=002p15toal6zhez&urlId=0021v1e4bjtkdcp0
That looks like an ugly spam message to me. Because neither do I know a Sophie Plantieux nor does that person seem to exist, according to google at least. She has a Viadeo account with 19 contacts and a Xing account but with no contacts. This is a tactic that could likely backfire, just wait until a couple of bloggers receive those emails and you will have a mess. On the other hand, bad press is also press, so they might just be waiting for that. Or is it a jealous competitor who is sending emails in their names? The email came from a gmail address, so it can not be proven that it is from viadeo themselves.
Now they boast 1.6 Mio members, almost half of the 4 Mio users that Xing has. Could they be a serious competitor to Xing? I haven’t seen that many French on Xing, they’re mostly on Linkedin and heck - maybe even on viadeo!
Looks like Xing got a good foothold into the spanish market with their acquisitions. But what about the rest of Europe?
Tags: socialnetwork, spam, viadeo, web 2.0, xing
October 3rd, 2007 at 01:52
I don’t see the point… where is the spam?
It’s only an invitation from a member…
All social network has invitations (Xing as well of course), Viadeo has invitations too…
This is not a spam… Sophie Plantieux has got your e-mail in her webmail and has invited you, that’s it…
You should ask Sophie Plantieux before posting nonsense
October 3rd, 2007 at 05:32
I don’t think I am the only one:
http://www.olivierdedoncker.com/spam-viadeo/spam-viadeo.htm
http://www.viadeo.com/annonces/detailduneannonce/?adId=00217rdo66lq6s7a&redirect=%2Fannonces%2Fannoncestoutes%2Findex.jsp%3FpageNumber%3D1%26county%3D0%26keywords%3D%26sort%3D1%26subCategory%3D65700%26publication%3D-1
October 17th, 2007 at 01:44
… exciting to observe the competition between social business networks. i don’t see linkedin as a serious german XING-competitor (maybe they launch their german version in 2009), but myCORNERS. ok, they don’t count a million users so far, but… let’s wait and see. offering the same features for free - i don’t refuse. and the network is available in german, french and english. cu on http://www.mycorners.com
October 17th, 2007 at 03:18
I got the same “invitation” from a “Martine Froy” I never heard of. And I got the same impression as you all: It’s a new wave of spam messages.
October 17th, 2007 at 08:29
@Anonymous, funny you’d say that, because I got the exact same mail also from a Martine Froy I’ve never heard of…
October 26th, 2007 at 07:02
Well, I came across this blog as I googled this same “Martine Froy”, whom I don’t know but from whom I just got an invitation to join this Viadeo. It seems very much like spam to me. And I’m not going and try to contact this Martine Froy, because like all these social and professional network platform, you’ve got to register before you can even start browsing through it. I don’t see why I should register to yet another one of these network just to figure out who she is. As for getting individual emails, you all know how easy this is. The fact that she had my personal email doesn’t mean that she got it from me or someone we would both know.
I hate that kind of agressive and hardly masked spamming…I’m certainly not going to join a network, which is managed by people using that kind of method. I’ll stick with LinkedIn and Facebook!
October 29th, 2007 at 02:12
Ok, I got the same “Martine Froy” e-mail. It is a spam, definitively.
April 12th, 2008 at 03:07
I just googled for “viadeo spam” and your blog entry was ranked first. Today we received an invitation from a Stefan Fries (whom we do not know) to join viadeo.com. The email was sent to a info@… address which - as most addresses with “info” in it - is not a personal address. So, sorry Tonio, to me this is also spam. And Viadeo offers no obvious way to block addresses from receiving invitations. Clearly, that is something all serious social networks should offer.
April 12th, 2008 at 03:09
[...] Viadeo - a (serious?) Xing competitor - using spam? [...]
April 16th, 2008 at 03:36
I’ve had a few spam invitations from viadeo over the last couple of months. I wouldn’t trust them with my data.
April 24th, 2008 at 12:09
I am NOT a member and yet somehow have a magical membership, perhaps from a past life. There is an option that I can “no longer receive email” from Viadeo, however, I have to sign in to use it. And since I don’t have a password (because I never ever joined) I can’t utilise it.
Numerous emails to ask them to REMOVE ME FROM THE VIADEO SPAM LIST have been ignored.
MESSAGE TO VIADEO “IF YOU WANT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY THEN STOP YOUR IDIOTIC SPAMMING”