

Inviting the adressbook - jupiter

Everybody wants his users to spread the word about his application. If it's a good one, they usually do it on their own. Sometimes it seems to help to gently nudge users by offering them to load their freemail adressbook so they just have to select from their contacts and massmail invitations for you. While I would never use such a feature, it has apparently become standard for social applications.<p>Anyone like to share his experience about how this is accepted?
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prateekdayal
As others have said, normal users don't mind this. However this works best in
applications which have an inherent benefit in connecting to a lot of people.
So while this may work very well for linkedin and facebook, it may not work
too well for say a youtube

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mixmax
It's a slippery slope - it certainly helps getting users to join, but it has
implications on privacy and trust. That being said I think that most users
will probably see it as a service and not a threat. The thing to notice here
is that YC users and techies see the problems with this approach, but normal
users don't. They just see the service, not the implications of it. So if you
don't abuse it I think there are certainly cases where it makes sense to do.

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timcederman
I think the term "slippery slope" is far too overused.

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jkneib
I wouldn't use it either, but there must be some who do. Otherwise I couldn't
explain that you can already buy the feature (e.g.
<http://www.getmycontacts.com>)

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streety
Please don't do it this way. Google, Yahoo and Windows Live now all have APIs
you can access to fetch contacts without having to handle the users
credentials.

Getting contacts via delegated authentication should avoid aggravating the
technophiles/hackers/security-aware (too much) whilst still allowing you to
'go viral'.

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trezor
Whenever I get auto-generated invitations based on systems like these I delete
and ignore them or alternatively tag them as SPAM if I receive them from more
than one person.

It leaves me with a very negative impression of the site or service before I
have even seen it.

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Tichy
It also makes me slightly angry towards the person who gave away my email
address. Although most must be forgiven because they are not aware of what
they did.

