Hi Turk,

This is one of the more candid write-ups we have had in some time and, as a founder of Naymz, wanted to reach out to you personally.

First off, I am really sorry your experience using Naymz was poor and drove you to spend the time to post your frustrations. We always strive to run an honest and ethical business and feedback like this, as critical as it may be, helps us learn and improve. We are a small start-up of 3 people trying to create a useful product and service. Most of our 1 million plus members seem to find Naymz beneficial.

We try to make our invitation process as transparent as possible. There are no hidden email tactics and we try to be as descriptive as possible with the process we use directly on the page that our members send invitation from. Here is an example screenshot as a reference.

As a long term internet industry guy who was buying online media back in the early part of the decade, hearing us compared to Gator and Plaxo (of old) certainly makes me cringe. I completely agree with you that we should be condemned to karmic hell if we were to use the tactics these companies previously employed. Our invitation email practices are consistent with just about all other major social networking platforms including invitation reminder frequency.

Naymz sends out one invitation out and two reminders over the following 30 days should a recipient have not accepted or declined. After 30 days, the invitation expires and no more emails are sent. If the recipient does not want to join someone’s network, they only need to decline the invitation by clicking one button. They can also permanently opt-out at anytime by selecting the “opt-out” link that appears at the bottom of every email they receive. This is described directly next to the form you used to import/add and send invitations which I have included above. Many social networks, like us, have a one step process for inviting existing members and new members simultaneously as opposed to separately. We do this to make the invitation process quicker and easier, not to trick people. We add disclaimers to the invite page hoping that people read them and understand them before hitting the “invite” button.

As far as receiving too many emails from us during your membership, we give our members complete control over the email the receive from Naymz. At the bottom of every single email members ever received from us, there is a link that says “Too many emails? Change your settings here”. Clicking on that link will automatically log members in to their account and bring them to a section where they can change their email settings or turn all emails completely off. Naymz also has a clean bill of health with anti-spam DNS Blocklists and we are 100% Cann-Spam compliant.

Again, we are sorry that we have left a negative impression on you and that we are no longer part of your social networking portfolio. We wish you the best of luck with future networking endeavors and this blog. Please feel free to contact me directly at any time in the future with any other questions, complaints, or recommendations, etc.

Cheers,
Tom Drugan
Naymz Founder
http://tom.drugan.name

Ugh. I messed up the XHTML on a link and can’t correct it. Sorry about that.

First, let me first express my appreciation to you for actually taking the time to reply. It’s rare that the head of a company would do so, and it should be acknowledged despite my current feelings toward your company/product.

That said, I would take issue with a couple of your comments.

First, I would suggest that your claim that the sign up process is “to make the invitation process quicker and easier” sounds great on paper, but is a fabrication. The reason you do that, I would suggest, is due to only having 1 million users. If you only displayed the matches to people who are currently members, it would appear that you have very few users (which is true).

I noticed that when I went back to figure out what I had missed. With hundreds of contacts on LinkedIn, I matched exactly 3 people. I had to scroll halfway down my list of contacts before I saw anyone with the icon next to their name.

Had you displayed only the people I matched, it’s unlikely I would have ever returned. When I signed up with Twitter in 2007, other than the four or five friends who had seen it at SXSW, I couldn’t find anyone I knew on the service and it was almost a year before I went back.

I suspect you know full well that people won’t return to a service they don’t find useful – and a social network with nobody in it isn’t very useful.

Second, the “invite a friend” process is especially burdensome to anyone with a large contact list. The second time I went through the process, I specifically looked for the “toggle all” option. At that time, the star icon was located where the toggle option is now. With three matching names, and hundreds unmatched, it would have been incredibly painful to remove people. I’m glad to see that has been fixed.

Finally, your site appears to have been designed by a bunch of marketing guys. It cleverly walks the line between a useful product and one that can simply check off all the necessary legal boxes.

For instance, your default e-mail setting is “painful” yet you claim goodness because you bury a link at the bottom of your messages that, if found, will allow me to reduce the pain. That’s a marketing department trick. You want to put your name in front of me as often as possible in the hopes that it will spur me to act. In the same way, you want to put your name in front of my contacts repeatedly, so you don’t give me the option to override your multiple messages.

Your controls for “My Subscription” include exactly two options – Upgrade and delete. Upgrade is prominently displayed with a large button. Delete requires me to hunt for an 8pt font that reads “edit”, or look through your FAQs. Both options make it less likely that you’ll commit the time to actually complete the deletion.

I appreciate where your company is coming from, but I don’t feel the need to reward overbearing marketing tactics. They’re distasteful.

As I said, I will not participate and will actively encourage people to avoid Naymz until such time as the site is made useful for your subscribers, not your marketing team.

[...] very candid article that raises some very strong issues was written by Turk and tdrugan, one of the founders of Naymz answered these [...]

I was pointed to this blog after being invited to join Naymz and expressing reservations among my peers. And, to be honest, this confirms a lot of my suspicions.

I think the bottom line in all this – leaving aside the netiquette issues – is: is it useful? All social media has to start somewhere, and the sooner it achieves critical mass the better for its survival, hence the rampant land-grab attempted by Naymz. However, even if Facebook only had me and five friends, I would still grasp its offer and see its usefulness to me.

Likewise Twitter – even though I don’t use it, I understand its USP. But Naymz? Unless someone can give me a convincing reason in 30 words or fewer what makes it different from LinkedIn, I shall continue to avoid it. As with the original dotcom bubble, many will jump on the bandwagon – the difference is, with web 2.0, is it requires a commitment of its users beyond simply opting in.

I just deleted my Naymz account because it repeatedly spammed all of my GMail and LinkedIn contacts with invites. My original intent was to see who was already on Naymz, but as you’ve said, they simply just send invites to every single contact multiple times. Really aggressive and unnecessary, and I hope I have not lost any professional contacts because of these shenanigans.

Well, I just received the infamous, dreaded email from Naymz today.
I agree with everything here today but, going back to the original email they send out is troubling:

John,

Please click here to verify your ownership of scatmancometh@gmail.com. If you did not register this email address with Naymz, please contact misuse@naymz.com and we will investigate.

I would understand this statement if I had ever, ever heard of this company but, this is the first I’ve had contact with Naymz, EVER and the email is worded as if I’ve inquired about an account with them and I’ve been awaiting this email to verify my account.

This was a red flag and that’s where I came upon this discussion about Naymz tactics. I’m sooooo glad I didn’t click that link before investigating.

Privacy is such a huge topic these days and this company has blatantly crossed the line.

SHAME ON YOU NAYMZ!!! I will NEVER register at your site and be sure that I WILL pass along the sentiment.

Thank you TURK for bringing this to the surface and I hope everybody sees this blog.

Thank You.