LOL I got the same email and was wondering if TechCrunch authorized it or if they were just taking the liberty to spam folks that wanted signed up for SpinVox. I guess it backfired :P.

Yeah, I got it and thought it was colossally bold and stupid at the same time. Especially since I *suspect* that if Mr. Spammer had asked for your permission to offer a side-by-side trial you would have probably given him the opportunity right? But how many vm-to-text solutions does a person really need anyhow… In the future perhaps you can implement a vote or survey for registered readers only where one of the responses is “sign me up and please pass along my email address” rather than having us put our addresses in the clear?

First, I agree that SpinVox should give everyone that responded a free account. Bring it on!

Second, I too received the email from SmulScribe. I realized immediately that it was a competitor. I did not feel ‘taken advantage of’ nor do I see it as a big deal whatsoever. I put my email address up there knowing full well that I would likely get more spam as a result.

I do not consider the message from SmulScribe to be spam. It was written directly to me in a response to something the sender knew I had an immediate interest.

Hmm, maybe the viagra spammers know something about me that I don’t!

I got this email as well. Very confused as to why TechCrunch would endorse such a solicitation. Now I know the truth.

Too bad for Simulscribe. They have just pissed off a key person at one of the largest consumer internet companies in the world.

Of the four comments so far, I note that two people were confused as to if and why we endorsed this email. Such a bad move.

I also receive Simul’s email and I’m curious if there message falls under the definition of spam. Sure it was unsolicited, but according to wikipedia the message has to be bulk to be spam. So if they went one at a time, it’s just slightly weird marketing.
If the message had been more forthright, I don’t think this would be any problem at all.

Do 300 emails constitute “bulk”? Either way, this is spam.

Receiving bad publicity is NEVER a good thing. However, let this be a lesson in “Spamology” about what is — and isn’t — spam. It seems many people have a poor definition and understanding of what SPAM really is.

Maybe this is my CRM bias, but wouldn’t it be easy enough to link to a lead capture form that Spinvox maintains? Requesting posted email addresses is pretty messy, as you’re discovering.

You should immediately remove those comments and then submit a hard copy to SpinVox because this article seems like it is promoting others (who didn’t think about taking those emails) to go there and grab those emails. Just an observation but this certainly is spam with a bold move.

That is pretty funny. I was definitely thinking of putting up my email the other day but I knew I was too late to be in that 100 that got a free subscription so I just told myself no. Finally, I can see a company spam people and get in trouble for it because they did it so blatantly. Hopefully this is a lesson to all those that are trying to snake their way into businesses like Simul did. Thank for posting this Michael.

I’m not sure how anyone (except SimulScribe) would argue this isn’t spam - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_spam.

Do you think this is the spam you need to worry about when posting your email on a blog? Ha ha ha. Way to go, attack this company and leave all those others alone.

Michael, don’t you think you should be taking most of the blame for requesting email addresses on your blog instead of relaying the blame to probably the smallest abuser of your mistake?

Yes, James. I agree that this and most of the other world’s problems are my fault. I know that the apology in the post above, plus the fact that people wrote their emails knowing the risk does not mitigate my blame, and I should now be publicly attacked by anonymous commenters as punishment.

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.

I’m certainly not amazed, Arrington talks about the number of spammy comments and whatnot that are blocked here all the time; seems pretty obvious that putting your email addy up there (despite your clever john (at) site dot com encryption) was going to open you up to some unsolicited emails.

…well that certainly deflates my self righteousness, James. The normal response is “Screw you Arrington LOL” or something similar.

An interesting side-story to this, though, is that allegedly Spinvox are into spamming themselves too?

bold and aggressive with a touch of finesse.

it’s good to see that the competition is bold enough to ask direct for my business (regardless of the the slight foul in harvesting my email from a public post). it’s demonstrates they want me as a customer.

now, it’s up to both companies to show that they can deliver.

-stan

Not trying to be on SimulScribe’s side but there are two kinds of Spam and we should not paint both with the same brush.

There’s the untargetted, bulk, unsolicited and anonymous crap that we get shoved in our inboxes and then there’s the personal, kinda targetted but unsolicted emails.

Now yes, the tactic does seem a little shady, but a point can be argued that the people who got emailed may actually benefit from SimulScribe IF the service was suitable for them since they did ask for free accounts at SpinVox.

That’s a lot more different than telling those recipients that a loan has been approved for them and they should contact the sender to get the new low interest mortgage!

Michael, how about you stick to covering interesting and innovative Web 2.0 startups and technologies… or has this site offically gone Valleywag? This is the most pointless topic I have seen covered yet, not to mention the fake adgenda of trying to say positive things about Spinvox, when your only point here was to cry about someone using the TechCrunch® name to get some business.

How long until Spinvox shows up as a paid sponsor??? Unbelieveable….

John and others criticizing Michael - this seems like a pretty clear cut case of abuse and one that should be called out.

I feel that SimulScribe would have been much more ethical by sending an email to TechCrunch requesting some coverage themselves, or maybe they could have just commented on the original article.

Either way, they shouldn’t have just harvested the addresses. While it’s not a huge crime by any means - it does not portray them as ethical which is very useful to companies and always has been.

I do not think it is Spam. Sure some peoples’ definition of Spam includes anything that is not a direct reply. I have heard people refer to email with 30 recipients on the cc as Spam. I have also heard people refer to anything they don’t like as Spam (e.g. eyeblaster style ads).

I am not saying what this company did is morally right, but Spam is too general a term when it covers 10’s of millions of automated penis enlargement emails and 300 fairly well targeted manual emails. Heck, I even remember the olden days use of Spam when it meant to get someone in trouble by overloading their mail server during a flame war.

Three hundred emails is nothing - that quantity cannot approach a reasonable definition of bulk.

Ah, that’s the fun of the industry. Right now it’s cut throat. People with sites need exposure and badly. TechCrunch is a champion of exposure among early adopters. When TC ignores your request for a small mention, it gets frustrating. I speak from experience.

With my now-closed company, FuelEmpire, we had a superior product to our competitors (by account of any of our users), we just lacked exposure. Boompa.com got a feature on TC and has started gaining traction. I guess because we didn’t have a tag cloud or irrelevant name, we weren’t worthy of a feature.

My point is, it’s cut throat right now, and TC has a lot of power.

I was thinking that that would happen when I read that post, that post was a targeted email marketers dream, they new all of the email addresses there were valid and currently being used and those people were interested in the services that they are offering.

It just goes to show that the marketing department at SimulScribe is doing their job really well.

It also shows the influence of Techcrunch.com!

To me the issue isn’t that the emails were harvested from the page and mail was sent. The issue here is one of morality and deception. SimulScribe attempted to make the email look like it was coming from and/or endorsed by TechCrunch, as a part of (or related to) the 100 free accounts that were being given away by Spinvox. THAT, folks, is the issue. It is both deceptive and an outright lie, and that is why they should be called out on it. While it’s not the typical “Hot, new Web2.0 site” usually blogged about here, the post is justified so TechCrunch could clear its name and let the community know that the email was in face NOT solicited by them. It’s called saving face, and apparently many of the affected users needed an explanation.

This should be a good lesson for the TechCrunch Kids. This was an example of aggressive direct marketing. The solicitation was well written and pertained to the service you expressed interest in. The email subject on topic, the offer clear, and it included all the contact information of the soliciting party.

You were in a public place and expressed interest in a service. It was also known that the number of accounts being offered by Spinvox was limited so based on the number of responses some would be denied a free trial. Simulscribe was simply offering to fill that demand gap in the market place by offering you a free account, albeit through their competing service. It shows they want your business too! Competition is good and raises the bar on both companies.

Mike, to forbid such activities in the future simply add a ‘no harvesting’ clause to TechCrunch’s terms of use. And if such a clause already exists, shame on you “SimulScribe!” Bad, bad!

-Stan

Also, it might be a good idea for Techcrunch.com to take those email address’s in those posts out because there are plenty of so called “marketing bots” out there scanning web pages for email address’s to ad to their lists.

Those posters might find themselves receiving a lot more less targeted marketing emails in the near future.

Well, I didn’t post my email, so I didn’t get solicited, and I’m out of the debates… but reading the phrase “millions of automated penis enlargement” before noon has made my day. Thanks dan

I think the move was bold. Some may see it as spam, some may not, that’s a personal preference.

SimulScribe should have asked TC before using a sneaky email subject. A regular email subject would have been fine by me, instead of riding the coat-tails of the previous Spinvox article.

The motive is understood, but many of us with a startup would know that harvesting competitor emails like this would be bad for PR.

Also, I think it would be wise for TC to use a private form for submitting emails, so that this cannot happen again.

I think this was an ok decision by smulscribe. I got the email, had not heard about them, and now and willing to give them a try.

They are probably a bit peeved that this european thing arrives on the scene and gets this neat/free techcrunch boost, while they have been slogging around and gotten no coverage. I don’t if they suck or not, but also I don’t know if spinvox sucks or not.

I got an invite from you all (thanks by the way) and will give it a try.

With this post you just gave them 100x the publicity they would have every hoped to receive …

Mike,

Here’s an easy way to collect email or any other info next time: Zoho Creator allows you to include an entry form in your blog post. Readers can input their data but only you will have access to the full list.
I’m sure the Zoho folks will be happy to set it up for you:-)

When I received an email from SimulScribe last night, I immediately knew what they were up to (ie. not officially endorsed by TC), and I thought it was a pretty ballsy move. Since I had received two information request forms from SpinVox but no service yet, I figured I’d go ahead and try the competitor. Thirty minutes later I was leaving my first test message.

So was it spam? Well, yes…but no different than the other companies who specifically target my blog asking me to demo their new service (I have a statement posted welcoming these solicitations, so I guess it doesn’t really qualify as spam in my case). I like trying new things, but probably wouldn’t have tested or even paid very much attention to voicemail transcription if I didn’t have a free account to play with. But now that I’ll have two to compare and see which one I like better? This consumer wins.

:: Lisa
:: adora [at] techslut [.] net

The worst part is that spam filters sometimes filter out the good stuff too. For example, I forward my Michigan State e-mail to my GMail. An HR rep from Accenture sent me an e-mail to my MSU account and it ended up in my GMail spam.

Mike, I also use Akismet spam filter for Wordpress too, but lately spam messages have been finding ways around the filter on my blog. Are you also having the same problem?

Fair play. SimulScribe saw an opportunity to send an email for people wanting a free trial for a speech to text service and took it - good on. The most successful business always bend the rules along the way.

However, I agree with Rob Smith, Blockquote that the best way would have been for SimulScribe to send in an email to techcrunch with a similar offer.

I think techcrunch is trying to shit the focus away from their mistake by trying to publicly shame SimulScribe

How is it a tradmark violation Mike? Is TechCrunch really a famous and universally recognized tradmark? Maybe for us…

I think what they did it sketchy, but I don’t consider it spam. It’s only slightly worse than the methods every company in the world uses to do cold sales. They should have been more forthright in the email, but the email itself doesn’t strike me as something extremely dishonest. A bad move probably, but perhaps not worthy of trying to slander their reputation by suggesting that pulling emails off a public web site means they’re cavilier with private information

In fact, I think it’s a bit odd that you take offense that someone might email your readers, who willingly posted their email addresses, but feel completely in the right posting the CEO’s email address for all to see without his permission. I realize it’s a backlash, but two wrongs don’t make a right :).

My 2 cents - I like to play devils advocate.

300 is bulk, you would be correct. I misunderstood “some people” to mean a handful.
Can I say, though, that the Spinvox service is amazing? I’ve already recommended it to a few other people that have signed up for free trials.
It’s seriously awesome, so I hope they do take your advice and extend my trial to a full blown free account. I’ll sell the world on this…

FYI, a thread has been started in the TechCrunch Forum about this article.

All of you saying it’s fair play or not spam are on crack.

Fairplay would’ve been posting in the comments, saying hey I’m the CEO of a competitor, I think our product is better, use this link to sign up for a free trial (it will be taken down in 12 hours).

As it is, he took people’s emails that were specifically meant for someone else, and blackened his company’s name in the process.

I don’t think so, Jake. I just think that:

1. Mike hates spam
2. Mike is feels responsible/protective of his readers

But do you all see the different opinions on this tactic? This is why spam continues - because it’s low/no cost and 80 no’s for 1 yes is worth it.

Perhaps somewhat spammy…but do we hate all “spam”?

In the rare case an offer shows up in our inbox *exactly* when we’re looking for that specific product / solution, aren’t wer happy?

Legalities aside, that’s exactly what happened here, the email wasn’t just blindly sent to *any* email list. It was sent to people who had just declared their interest in this kind of service … not really evil, IMHO:-)

I got their email, and thought it was a pretty smart move on their part.

I am guessing 90% of the people who left their email as a comment, probably left a spam account anyway, fully expecting to receive junk. So at least this email was pitching something i was interested in. I took them up on their offer and I am very impressed with their service and will probably end up singing up after my trial is over.

Actually I agree with Ted in #41. It would have been better to make the offer in a comment. My whole point above was on the fact that while the form was wrong, the content basically offered readers what they had stated they wanted.

I, for one, was glad to receive the email and learn about another option. Well targeted advertising.

Leland - you mean well targeted spam.

Incredibly stupid move by Simulscribe. What they should have done instead was post a comment on the original post offering to match or beat the offer by Spinvox. That way they still get the message across and they don’t spam the individual commenters. Additional benefit would be that EVERYONE who read the comments would see the offer instead of just the recipients of their spam.

Also, Techcrunch FYI - there’s a typo in the title of this post.

Yeah, I got this crap the other day as well, and promptly deleted it. I don’t want to get emails for anything I didn’t sign up for.

No Thanks.

Spencer - or they could have emailed me and we probably would have written about it.