As sick as I am, I still have no problem getting all worked up over the whole Shelfari fiasco. If you are one of the people in either my table4five or gmail address books, you probably got an email from me asking you to join Shelfari, a website that lets people share what books they are reading with their friends. You know, like Good Reads, except EVIL. I received an invitation from a well-meaning friend (as in, she had no idea either), joined, and then made the big mistake-
“So”, Shelfari asked, kindly, “Do you have an address in Gmail? Give us your Gmail address and we’ll tell you if any of your contacts are also on Shelfari! Come one, do it, be a love.”
In my weakened state, I complied. Also, because I got the original invitation through my table4five email address, Shelfari had that one as well. And then the FUN began.
“This is an automated reply from Google Adsense. We are sorry you are having trouble with your account, we will respond shortly.” Um, huh?
“Hello, Thank you for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.Your feedback has reached an area of Customer Care dedicated to login and registration questions and problems. If you are currently able to sign in to your account but have a question specific to a particular Yahoo! service, please return to our help site at:” Wait a minute, what?
And this one, from a website I’ve never even HEARD OF:
“Thank you for lodging a systems administration support request with eleventeenth technical support. You will be notified via email as your request progresses or you can login via http://support.eleventeenth.com (using your email address) to check the status of your request – if you don’t already have a password for this address, please email us at support@support.eleventeenth.com to get one.
The details of your request are as follows:
Ticket ID: HNT-31053-227
Requester: elizabeth@table4five.net
Ticket Subject:Do we like the same books?
Ticket Status: new
From: elizabeth@table4five.net
Body:
Just a friendly reminder that I invited you to Shelfari. Come see the books I love and see if we have any in common. Then pick my next book so I can keep on reading.”
Shelfari SPAMMED SOMEONE ON MY BEHALF THAT I HAVE NEVER EVEN HAD AN ACCOUNT WITH.
I’ve deleted my account, but I have no idea if that is enough to stop the automated emails. I clicked the feedback link and left a scathingly pissed off comment about how much I HATE SHELFARI, but the problem with internet feedback forms is, they are easy to delete. I don’t know if anyone who is anyone at Shelfari will ever even see my feedback.
If you get an invitation to Shelfari, from me or anyone, DELETE IT immediately. If you get a follow-up invitation asking why you haven’t joined, DELETE DELETE DELETE. Don’t sign up, don’t click invitation links. It’s a big, huge, scam. And by the way, if you are reading this thinking “well gee, Elizabeth, I pink puffy heart love Shelfari”, I am happy that you haven’t had any problems. But I can not in good conscience let this go. We are all busy, our time is important, and a website that spams people through their emails has to be stopped.
Torches and pitchforks, anyone?
I’m absolutely shocked at this, Elizabeth. I’m a Shelfali member, and have made many friends there, who are avid bookreaders.
One thing I didn’t do was what they asked you to do, and that was respond to the question about having any friends in GMail. As long as I do that, I’ll be okay.
However, as your friend, I will make sure other Shelfari members are aware of this in the Shelfari Discussion Group.
I deleted my Shelfari account today because your account of your experience was the last straw. I don’t like that they don’t let people know they’re going to spam everyone in the world when you sign up. (Like Jean-Luc Picard, I didn’t let Shelfari access my e-mail list, but I find it annoying that they try to build up users that way). I sent them feedback about this too.
I prefer Good Reads and Library Thing, anyway — I use the former to keep track of my reviews of books I’ve read (e.g., library books), and the latter to catalog my personal library.
You need to send that email to their hosting and let them deal with it because spamming is against anybodies TOS.
I got a million of those Shelfari things. A couple weeks ago it was some other spammy raid-your-address-book thing that starts with a Q. The tip-off was when BloggerChicks started getting invited to join these things…heh.
Twitter: Table4Five
says:
Graham-I was hoping that someone would leave a comment that has had a good experience with them, so thank you. Even if I hadn’t given them my Gmail address, they still spammed people in my regular table4five address, the one my friend used when she invited me. Perhaps it’s just a glitch, I don’t know. But it sure left a bad taste in my mouth.
Twitter: Table4Five
says:
Nancy-Even if I hadn’t given them my Gmail address, they still spammed my table4five address, the one my friend used to invite me. So it’s just bad all the way around as far as I’m concerned. I’m on Good Reads too, my URL is http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/271428. I’m terrible about remembering to update it, but I’d love to have you add me as a friend!
Twitter: Table4Five
says:
Blueyes-this is at the bottom of the Shelfari page:
“Copyright © 2006-2007 Tastemakers, Inc. Portions of Shelfari are Copyright © 1996-2007 Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.”
So I suppose I could email Tastemakers, Inc. I’m guessing Amazon provides the links to the book images. I just don’t want to get spammed!
Twitter: Table4Five
says:
Izzy-Oooh, “Quechup”. Just the name should have tipped people off that it was a scam, lol. I’m glad you left a comment because I’m re-doing my sidebars and I just realized that I don’t have my BloggerChicks blogroll up!
I actually had an issue with Shelfari but was in touch with one of their employees after I blogged about it.
The button that allows you to invite friends from your email who are already on shelfari also activates all of the pre-selected email addresses that are listed below. I went back and forth with Dave from Shelfari quite a bit on this. They are talking about moving the button.
Overall, I like the site and love being able to see what books people are reading and being able to see other’s reviews of books I’m interested in reading. And I have to say they were super responsive after I poseted about the incident on my blog.
Twitter: Table4Five
says:
Amie-Could you please email Dave’s contact email address? I would like to let him know exactly what happened. If it had been just my fault for giving Shelfari my Gmail address, that would be one thing. They need to not send any email invites to anyone automatically, in my opinion. Thanks for letting me know that you’ve had a good experience with them.
I wondered why I got one of these, and then a reminder or two! I thought “Gee, she really wants me to join this, doesn’t she!” Luckily I am too disorganised to have done it yet!
i received these emails from yours and one other person on gmail. i knew immediately that it was trash. first of all, if you wanted me to know about it, you would have emailed me personally and two, you know that i would be livid if i got one of those forward.spam emails from any of my friends. i just deleted it because i knew it was foolishness. thanks for posting this though. some people might not think that deep and just think that you’re spamming them
p.s. good luck with it. i’ve deleted them 3 times so far and to date they haven’t sent anymore!
That’s a really crappy way to get new members! I use Library Thing and even though others here have had good things to say about Shelfari, I won’t be joining them.
Twitter: Table4Five
says:
Amanda-I’m so sorry! Try Good Reads instead, or several commenters have mentioned Library Thing. And don’t give any site your other email addresses!
Twitter: Table4Five
says:
Sheila-Others have mentioned Library Thing as well. I wish I had more time to actually READ books, then maybe I would have time to get more involved with book-reading websites! LOL
Hi Elizabeth,
Dave from Shelfari here.
I see that our customer support person already responded to your email, but I saw your blog this morning and wanted to respond. I can see that this has caused you quite a bit of trouble, which is not a very good beginning to Shelfari. As MommaLoves and J-L Picard have testified, Shelfari is a really wonderful gathering place for readers.
We went through several rounds in our design to make the process as clear as possible, including creating the two sections (friends already on Shelfari, and those who are not) each with a clear button to easily deselect the contacts or choose who to invite. We let you decide what to say to those you invite and let you know that we will send one follow-up invitation a few days later. For the handful of people who email us letting us know of mistaken invitations, we cancel that follow-up invitation. Your follow-up invitations were canceled with your account cancellation.
As MommaLoves noted, we are looking at a redesign of our registration and invitations as we speak. Shelfari is a 5-person company, and we are working hard to improve the site each day. Look for updates soon.
If you would like to give Shelfari a second chance, please send me an email, and I’ll gladly reactivate your account (invitations will, of course, remain canceled).
Again, this is a really rocky start to Shelfari, but I do hope you’ll still give the service a chance. Surrounding one’s self with this community of readers is simply a delight.
Happy reading!
–Dave
Interesting! I am super pissed, too, especially since I chose ONE person to invite, but they went ahead and spammed by address book. Grrr.
Also, I think it’s good that Shelfari commented, but this has to be stopped.
Twitter: Table4Five
says:
Hi Dave,
I appreciate you leaving a comment. I still swear that at no point in the signup process did I give Shelfari permission to go through my table4five.net email contacts. I did check the box for Gmail. However, if I had known that the Shelfari system was going to go through and send invitations to Google Adsense or eleventeenth (the developer of FUEL MY BLOG, for heaven’s sakes), I would have never agreed at all. Your email invite system has got to be more selective than that.
Thank you for cancelling the rest of the invitations for me. If I do decide to check it out again, I’ll contact you first. Thanks again for the comment.
Twitter: Table4Five
says:
Jennifer, you too, huh? Sorry to hear that! You probably got one from me, didn’t you? I know you are in my address book.
New rule-no more auto invites for me.
hi the same happened to me. a friend from India emailed me, as part of her many email list. She realised and emailed everyone again and apologised for what she thought was her mistake.
I followed the shelfari link to create an account, was asked to access my gmail account before I was allowed to continue to enter the site, (there is NO option first of all to skip this option, so I did, selected my contacts in order to move on, then I thought I deselected them, or clicked the button not to send emails to them.
To my horror I immediately received about 20 auto reply emails from work accounts and it had sent an invite from me (without my consent or knowledge) to 452 people
If that Guy from Shelfari is looking at this comment, can you please note that I am really not pleased.
No one likes their email details splashed about, specially some people are very paranoid about it.
I don’t even know where you got 452 addresses, I didn’t recognise some of the auto replies.
Not a happy customer.
The same thing happened to me. I am SO pissed. I am considering a lawsuit as they have no clear option to ‘opt-out’, they spoof your email address without warning and a huge other list of items that clearly violate the DMCA. I will post additional information here after I consult with my attorney on this matter.
Yikes.. I just signed up. Maybe it’s been fixed by now because it looks like a really fun website. I’m going to check out some of the other book shelf type sites, too.
I just ranted on my blog about the kind of crappy site that Shelfari is and Googled up the words,’Shelfari Sucks’ to find scores and scores of people who are sick of Shelfari including you.
Sujoy’s last blog post..SHELFARI SUCKS
Shelfari is as crappy as ever.
Sujoy’s last blog post..SHELFARI SUCKS
I’m not trying to contradict folks here, but I tripped across this blog posting searching for something else and… well, I think you might be confused.
When you sign up, you have the option to either add friends manually, or to automate it by connecting your address book on gmail/yahoo/etc. If you choose to add your contact list, you can then *choose* you to e-mail those friends.
I signed up for Shelfari and e-mailed no one. I later chose to invite two friends.
This is how pretty much all social networking sites work, and is not unique to Shelfari. The same feature is available on LinkedIn, Friendster, etc. etc.
Perhaps the site is not clear enough — but it is not Shelfari that spammed your friends, it is you. Whoops
Nice information, thanks.
Shelfari does suck I was banned from Shelfari for politely disagreeing about the historical accuracy of “The Book of Mormonâ€. Mormons were mad that I pointed out flaws in its history and so they contacted an admin, Amanda, and she banned me just because they had the majority. She said my comments were inflamatory but they were much more polite than what was being written to and about me.
I just stumbled across this old post. Very funny
It has comical value for sure.
Twitter: VfrpXHpcycT
says:
It might have something to do with the length of the posts currently on the main page. ,
Twitter: MXrKUqoKegpImqyQo
says:
That was really informative and interesting. ,