
Pinterest Spamming Your Facebook Friends? - alpb
http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/02/10/pinterest-is-spamming-your-facebook-friends-email-with-fake-connection-requests/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheNextWeb+%28The+Next+Web+All+Stories%29
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sudonim
Ive been getting tons of notifications that people were now following me. To
the point that I turned them off. It's surprising to find out that those
people aren't explicitly following me. Even more surprising is that they are
all getting requests saying I'm following them.

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jmcqk6
I signed up for a pinterest account and didn't even realize that I didn't have
to use facebook. So I signed in with facebook, thinking that it was just going
to basically use it as a login portal, and maybe to import interests. Instead
it auto-followed every one of my facebook friends who have a pinterest account
(and sent them an email to that effect).

Within about 10 minutes, I had turned off the link to facebook, and then I
discovered that there is no intuitive way to see everyone that it set you to
follow. (Go to the settings page and see if you can figure it out)

I have no idea why it's so popular, especially with such a shitty interface
and poor communication and similarities to every other social bookmarking app
that's ever been created. But I guess you could say the same thing about
myspace and social networking.

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AznHisoka
I'm not praising their behavior, but can understand them doing this. In this
day and age, it's almost impossible to grow an online service without doing
something somewhat shady (ie AirBnb getting users from Craigslist). Of course
you can cross the line.

I somehow doubt this is going to cost them anything substantial though. The
tech audience will know about it but the casual users will be ignorant, and
just shrug it off. Pinterest's core audience are not techies.

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bradmccarty
As an update to this, Ben (CEO) has dropped me a line and we're going to be
speaking today regarding some changes that he says Pinterest has implemented.
I've not yet updated the piece, as I don't have the whole story, but I will as
soon as possible.

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foobarbazetc
Ah yes. The changes that occur _after_ they've grown the user base by the
desired amount. :)

