I hate those ‘I’m using Blechster…. You should try it!!’ emails. If you want me to try something, just drop me an email. And forget Plaxo. I hate Plaxo. Learn how to update your contacts the old fashioned way, by keeping up with people.
So this morning, when I got an email from Adriana asking me to try out something called Goowy, I was at first taken aback, then I figured.. well she’s a smart one.. can’t be all bad. Might even be worth a try.
So it’s some sort of AJAX-y Flash-y desktop thingie and if there’s one thing I hate almost as much as the aforementioned ‘Try me!’ emails, it’s AJAX-y Flash-y desktop thingies. I already have a desktop. It’s called my computer.
I figured I’d forgive Adriana and forget about it. Until I read that she actually didn’t send me that email, Goowy did. Or rather the process of signing up for Goowy generated a spam message to all of her contacts. You can read about it here.
Fortunately I declined the chance to import my Gmail contacts, sparing you all a love note.
In the meantime, please join me in welcoming Goowy to the Spammers Hall of Fame.
Update: The always quotable Ben Matcalf offers his perspective:
Sure, this clever stunt may have (artificially) boosted your sign-ups, I’m sure the VC’s will love that. But it’s created a lot of immediate bad vibe about your product, and that’s before you realise the main service is just a crappy flash app. Considering the way you have gone about all this, what percentage of these signup do you think will ever come back? Very few I would suggest.
Thanks Goowy for showing the world how not to launch a website!
