Rapleaf wants your email address

It is companies like this that prove the downside of things like the pie in the sky lifestream ideaology or as I put it originally - Who needs Carnivore when you have lifestreams - http://www.winextra.com/2007/09/01/who-needs-ca...

Not that I'm defending Rapleaf in any way, nor do I know any of the players involved, but if you're going to link to the ZDNet article, you should also link to Rapleaf's response (which is a bit explanation and a whole lot of apology).

Also, this isn't about selling email addresses, it's about the profiles. Knowing something about you based on the kinds of social networks you join and the information those networks make publicly available *about* you. Your email address is the least of it.

You are absolutely correct about Facebook. A few email spammers seem to be trolling Facebook for email addresses. Just make sure that when you allow someone to become your "friend" on Facebook, that you restrict their access to your profile. Otherwise, with unrestricted access, your "friends" will be able to see your email address.

Robert, I respectfully disagree with your take on this one. Judi's right, it's not about selling emails - the buyers bring the email adresses they already have and ask Rapleaf "what do you know about these people? are they more likely to be MySpace users or Facebook users?" I think there's some potential for a legitimate business model there, specifically the opposite of "more commercial crap you don’t want." Instead, marketing that's more like Adsense than it is like pop-ups. Hopefully. I wrote about this whole situation at length at http://marshallk.com/rapleaf-and-their-problems

Many of us (you and I included) may be capable of creating social media content that serves marketing goals, but I don't think that will ever make up 100% of the marketing efforts online - not even close. For the rest of the world, data mining grounded in user control of that data (the kind of thing Rapleaf has the potential to facilitate) makes a lot of sense to me.

Rapleaf is guilty of a lot of things, but I disagree with your characterization of them here. I'm really hoping they get it together - and that doesn't preclude selling information to marketers, in my mind.

Judi and Marshall: I know it's not just about emails. I didn't make that point clearly. Thanks for making it for me. I updated my post to link over to Judi's post.

I was just trying to say that this is the modern-day equivilent of selling email addresses. Of course there's more to sell now.

Robert -- Rapleaf doesn't sell email addresses to anyone. Ever. we never have and never will. We also do not troll Facebook for email address -- we never have and never will. Stefanie Olsen makes the distinction clear in her article on news.com as do almost all the bloggers who wrote about Rapleaf (many wrote very thoughtful and insightful comments -- see the critical, yet very well-researched, blogs from Marshall Kirkpatrick and Judi Sohn and others).

Also -- you have my email address and mobile number, you're free to call me any time to talk before you write about us. You're free to write anything you want, of course, but we're happy to give you any information to make your job easier.

As one of the most influential bloggers on the web, you have a responsibility to print your strong opinion. But you also have a responsibility not to print things that are false -- especially if you can avoid it with one phone call or email.

we've definitely made some mistakes and we hope to correct them, but we're proud of what we're doing overall and we have an opportunity to create the dream of portable reputations and identities and social graphs that people have wishing for for many years.

I'm a huge fan of your blog and of you personally and, in the future, i hope you will contact anyone else you write about before writing a story and (assuming they get back to you in a timely manner) give them at least 10 minutes to answer your questions.

@Auron

You PR speak is all well and nice and I expect that making points with Robert will go a long way to giving you cred with the big boys.

I'm just curious as to what safeguards you have in place that to protect users from others that might use the service for less than .. uhh ... proper reasons as I have already expressed my opinion concerning services like this .. but then I don't have the pull like the big boys such as Robert.

Social media is a miracle for marketers. The information we willingly give to complete strangers about ourselves is on a level never dreamed of in the days of focus groups behind mirrored windows. I'm beginning to think people should have a spam identity, an utterly fabricated name and address, plus an identifying email, just for tracking the spam that ensues from each registration.

If anyone knows of spam e-mail please sign me up using this e-mail address jennifer_mac21@hotmail.com

Thank you so much for content, you would track;)

customerservice@pubsvs.com this is a spam email address that I keep getting and can't get rid of OOOUch