Bad use of social media - FanIQ harvests address books to send deceptive email invites

This morning, I received an email from a friend of mine. The title was "Compare yourself to Joe Schmo" (joe@schmo.com). (Obviously, I changed the names).The body said that Joe had sent me a private message and to please read it or Joe would think I ignored it.

The site that sent the email is called FanIQ. They apparently really, really want to harvest email addresses. This site lists the sequence of steps they take you through to get you to register.

FanIQ will now send me a series of reminders to subscribe, much to the embarrassment of my friend and to my irritation. My friend is tech-savvy, yet was taken in and thus forced to send an apology to everyone in his address book.

This is so clearly bad marketing that I am unable to figure out what it is they hope to achieve. it's bad for the FanIQ brand and bad for their entire business.

So, I will never join their community. The people who unintentionally allow FanIQ to access their entire contact list, including business contacts, job-related addresses, and other people to whom it's hard to explain a gaffe like this, hold them in low regard.

It's too bad, because I am an avid college football fan and thus a member of their target market. I might join a community like this one if they were not so needlessly aggressive - and thus incompetent - in their marketing.