Friendster Becomes Annoyster With Spammy Email Campaign

Posted on November 13, 2005

Friendster, which has been losing ground to its competitors MySpace and Facebook, recently tried a marketing campaign that was not well received. Friendster allows people to have an email sent to friends that they would like to join. After receiving the message the friend can either sign-up for Friendster or ignore the email. But News.com reports that Friendster decided to send out an email to all the people that never signed up and some people thought the email was quite spammy.

The one-time hot spot dug deep into its network to pull out the e-mail addresses of people who didn't initially respond to friends' invites to join the online social network a year or more ago. The e-mails implied they were coming from a friend when, in fact, they were being sent by the company.
The e-mails, which went out during the last two weeks, show just how tough the competition is getting for Friendster as it battles growing online giant MySpace.com.

The mass emailing was clearly a mistake. A Friendster spokesperson told CNET that there would not be another email re-invite type of message sent out. Friendster spokesman Jeff Roberto said, "We're not in the business of spamming." He says this was a one-time mailing.

While this email campaign was a big mistake Friendster did recently team up with Grouper to offer video sharing services for Friendster members which is a good move.