Just received an email from a colleague at KMLF, asking me to join a new social networking site, called Quechup (which I am not going to link to). I looked at it, and thought, “Do I need another social networking site?”
I’m glad I stopped to think. I was already linked to this colleague on LinkedIn (which I do trust), and replied directly that I wasn’t sure that I needed another site, and received an apology by reply with the following info:
“There is a warning making the rounds about a ‘new’ ‘social network’ called Quechup. Once one signs up, it accesses your address book and sends invitations to all those parties under your name. And there is word that one can’t cancel membership.”
This has been commented on in a number of recent blogs – just checking quickly finds similar warnings – and some related discussion – at Dwight Silverman’s TechBlog, TwistImage and Insights into Christopher S Penn.
This is problematic. Social networking – and knowledge sharing – relies heavily on trust. Sites like this violate trust. Should we now stop trusting?
We potentially end up in the “war on terror” situation – as soon as governments start to restrict freedom and remove rights in order to stop terrorism, we have just handed the terrorists exactly what they want.
We may need to tread a little more carefully and look a little deeper before we trust, but we cannot stop trusting!
I came up with a better title for this when I posted it to actKM – “Anti-social network”…