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August 30, 2007

TellThem: MySpace Kills Another Startup

Nick Gonzalez

40 comments »

tellthemlogo.pngMySpace has put the axe to yet another startup. Last night they made a call threatening legal action against freshly launched TellThem.mobi, a service that lets you message all your friends from your mobile phone.

TellThem’s site simply reads:

“On Wednesday August 29th, 2007, we got a call from MySpace threatning to take legal action if we didn’t take the website down. Apparently it violates their terms of service…. switch to Facebook.”

Switch to Facebook indeed. TellThem is only one in a long line of startups getting bullied by MySpace. Previously they killed DatingAnyone, SingleStatus, copied RealEditor, stalled all widgets, and played chicken with PhotoBucket.

I’m surprised this continues to happen when MySpace is trying to embrace developers through a developer platform. Overzealous legal stiff-arming is only contributing to the brain drain around growing MySpace and driving developers to greener pastures.

TellThem plans to move on to Bebo as well.

Thanks for the tip Marshall.

Update: MySpace’s complaint centered around TellThem serving as a proxy for logging into people’s MySpace accounts. The concern is that services like this could be phishing sites collecting credentials for malicious use. Jason Cox, of TellThem said collecting the credentials was necessary because there is no API for accessing the messaging functionality they use. This was not the case for Jason’s last MySpace related startup, BuddyWave.

The Director of Mobile operations has already emailed TellThem and asked them to develop for Facebook.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at 10:43 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Useful Concept

    August 30th, 2007 at 10:45 am

    You are linking to .com and not .mobi. Should be
    http://tellthem.mobi/

  2. Ninetynine Problems

    August 30th, 2007 at 10:48 am

    What terms did they actually voilated?

  3. Francis Kaiven

    August 30th, 2007 at 10:54 am

    Myspace should drop there giant heads in shame. From what I remember the internet has more freedom than any country in the world. Stiff-arming someone is out of fear. And one little thing about MySpace, I had to leave because my sight kept getting hacked. If you are going to try to scare the competion, why don’t you get your company straight first.

  4. Rajesh Shakya

    August 30th, 2007 at 11:10 am

    Many start ups are shutdown every day. Big fish eat small fish. Unfortunately small fishes can not fight against big fishes.

    Rajesh Shakya
    http://www.rajeshshakya.com

  5. Nick Nogueira

    August 30th, 2007 at 11:25 am

    I see desperation. Btw, myspace sucks anyway.

  6. Richard Corsale

    August 30th, 2007 at 11:25 am

    “The Director of Mobile operations has already called TellThem and personally asked them to develop for Facebook.”

    is “Mobile operations” run by the UN? … :)

  7. Richard Corsale

    August 30th, 2007 at 11:27 am

    They should move offshore and give myspam the finger.

  8. manfmNantucket

    August 30th, 2007 at 11:33 am

    I suppose this one had some potential for abuse by advertisers…
    still it would be good to get more details as to what terms it violated.

    It’s sad to see myspace choking off its own ecosystem especially when the effect is to drive innovation to its competitors… especially since myspace grew by being an open permissive environment, until the takeover.

  9. raphna

    August 30th, 2007 at 11:42 am

    MySpace is the biggest POS on the web. I hope it goes out of existance soon. Worst developed site ever.

  10. James Thomas

    August 30th, 2007 at 12:02 pm

    This just further highlights the danger of building your business or idea solely on a single popular platform.

  11. TechDumpster (living in First Life)

    August 30th, 2007 at 12:08 pm

    Facebook as just as bad as Myspace. They screwed over Oodle by signing a deal with them and launching their own Marketplace days later.

    I continue to be amazed at how Facebook gets a free pass for their transgressions while Myspace can do no good.

    Fanboy alert!

  12. Don Wilson

    August 30th, 2007 at 12:20 pm

    “The Director of Mobile operations has already emailed TellThem and asked them to develop for Facebook.”

    The Director of Mobile for who?

  13. Ryan

    August 30th, 2007 at 12:21 pm

    Facebook is not all a bed of roses…

    They cease & desisted Facebook Downloader (http://lifehacker.com/software/facebook/download-of-the-day-facebook-downloader-162217.php)

    And they did the same to FacebookSync (http://lifehacker.com/software/address-book/download-of-the-day-facebooksync-mac-250072.php)

    Both of which did no worse transgression that let you download your own contacts into Address Book.

  14. Bill Hartzer

    August 30th, 2007 at 12:27 pm

    OK, so they called them. Did they send them a cease and desist or actually sue them? Probably not.

  15. Dominic

    August 30th, 2007 at 12:39 pm

    ALL YOU FACEBOOK & MYSPACE PARASITES

    Build your own business and stop the piggybacking off these social sites. Hell, it’s better to build a clone of a popular site than build an application for these sites. They will steal it, and leave you sucking hind tit. They get the GOLD MINE, you GET THE SHAFT !!!

  16. Alex

    August 30th, 2007 at 12:49 pm

    The irony of course is that MySpace acts as a proxy site for GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo mail and others, to fetch contacts from those services (as do LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.). So it sounds like a bit of a hypocritical policy…

  17. ***V***

    August 30th, 2007 at 1:15 pm

    As current MySpace users mature they will move over to Facebook and ultimately win the social battle. MySpace may be the headmaster now, but it’ll be taken down in due time.

    V

  18. SylverStyle

    August 30th, 2007 at 2:56 pm

    MySpace definitely has the rights to do so.. so do as you’ve planed.. move to Bebo and/or Facebook and show them they’ve missed a cool service.

  19. Dave Hodson

    August 30th, 2007 at 4:32 pm

    It never ceases to amaze me that companies don’t secure a *written* agreement before launching a product. Of course MySpace shut them down for exactly the reasons they said - why would MySpace let them become a proxy for (even more) spam on the service? If no API exists to login, TellThem shouldn’t have built the service.

  20. nitsuj

    August 30th, 2007 at 6:04 pm

    “And one little thing about MySpace, I had to leave because my sight kept getting hacked.”

    Was it “getting hacked” by you clicking on videos of girls, etc. which than bring you to a fake login page by chance, or did hackers just happen to attack your personal Myspace site repeatedly out of the millions out there?

  21. Save Videos

    August 30th, 2007 at 6:20 pm

    Another one bites the dust, another one bites, another one bites, another one bites the dust.

  22. Nick Gonzalez

    August 30th, 2007 at 8:27 pm

    Don, The director of Facebook’s mobile program.

  23. Campbell

    August 30th, 2007 at 10:52 pm

    Yep Myspace is starting to suck. As a developer I am wondering wtf they are thinking. I wont be to interested in developing for their upcoming API if they continue throwing weight around.

  24. Zakk Forchilli

    August 30th, 2007 at 11:01 pm

    Thats bullshit ! myspace sucks! they care about people taking their information, when theirs a million spammers on myspace. tom sucks ass !

  25. Katrina

    August 30th, 2007 at 11:05 pm

    MySpace does suck. I’ve been on there for 2 1/2 years and, if not for all the people I’ve connected with through the site, I’d just delete the whole thing. I’ve started using Blogger, which is a much cleaner interface. And it doesn’t have as many damn problems as Mysuck does. Every damn day, there’s something wrong with that effing site.

  26. ChanceChat

    August 30th, 2007 at 11:20 pm

    MySpace absolutely sucks!

  27. strategy

    August 30th, 2007 at 11:27 pm

    I dont like Myspace all that much, but they seem to have a valid complaint against TellThem. As far as photobucket goes, most of photobuckets users were using it for myspace. Instead of Myspace paying the 10 or 11-figure pricetage, it couldve just started its own service. It’s a 2 way street, there’re startups that leech, scrap content, etc., off of successful sites and they need to be stopped too.

  28. Elad

    August 31st, 2007 at 12:13 am

    Very stupid move. I’m sure that Myspace realizes that it faces a real challenge from Facebook (and others) and that it needs to do anything it can to attract developers, not alienate them.
    That’s what happens when new media companies get bought by old media, where lawyers rule. Lawyers of course never create anything, they only protect existing assets, or in the case of markets where the rules are changing very fast and the lawyers don’t understand them, they destroy existing assets.

    Dave Hodson - your strategy wouldn’t work - Myspace would never have given them a written agreement. They worked on faith, which is really the only way to do it when you’re a feature-startup, i.e. someone who doesn’t build its own platform, just adds functionality to existing platforms.
    It’s a dangerous game, but then again, it takes much less work than actually building your own platform, so your overall risk is smaller.

  29. Mark

    August 31st, 2007 at 12:24 am

    None of these companies are charities, if they’re incorporated then they’re obliged to their share holders to defend their interests. Maybe they got where they are by doing something sexy at the start, but now that’s secondary to being profitable. Don’t be so surprised.

  30. Dan

    August 31st, 2007 at 12:55 am

    It’s an interesting game. People or at least early adopters recognize the need for social network aggregators or open social networking, but at the same time there is this whole attitude of “That’s a TOS violation” especially from MySpace.

    Frengo announced the ability to send myspace bulletins from your mobile months ago: http://mashable.com/2007/02/09.....d-comments - but it seems to have mysteriously disappeared.

    http://frengo.com/myspace is now a page not found.

    Companies like Spokeo and the other social network aggregators take your email/password info. It can only be a matter of time before they get hit too…. however, Bebo and Facebook don’t seem to be quite as aggressive as MySpace…perhaps they understand the concept of what these sites are trying to achieve even if the implementation is not the best.

  31. Chaz

    August 31st, 2007 at 1:14 am

    fuck myspace its time is just about over…to bad google invested 900 mil in a dying website lol I give them 2 year and everyone will leave that site for somehing more FREE from control….why the fuck do they think they are anymore ???

  32. David

    August 31st, 2007 at 1:36 am

    Facebook - its the Myspace for people with pubes!

  33. Sean

    August 31st, 2007 at 1:48 am

    MySpace seems to have a better content policy than Facebook. MySpace states they will not use your content outside of its “domain”, whereas Facebook very clearly states that they have the right to use any and all of your posted content (photos, art, music) at their discretion.

  34. Omadsense

    August 31st, 2007 at 5:50 am

    Is this why some of my own video company functions stop working on myspace. I had a accualt news feed from another company playing on my page and all of a sudden it just would not work - saying feed could not find site.

  35. John

    August 31st, 2007 at 8:27 am

    Heard they are suing mydogspace.com too.

  36. Josh

    August 31st, 2007 at 12:56 pm

    ===”# Richard Corsale

    August 30th, 2007 at 11:27 am

    They should move offshore and give myspam the finger.
    “===

    I second that. rofl

  37. Leah Jewel

    September 3rd, 2007 at 4:47 pm

    This is unbelievable and absolutely abhorrent to think that in the year 2007, a platform like “http://www.myspace.com” would misuse the time, energy, and resources to hunt down individuals and small companies for doing the very thing that the site is intended for. The point of such sites is making social, personal, and professional connections, making new friends, sharing new developments, information, and resources. To have a developer attracting more users to MySpace, due to their product creation, should be viewed by MySpace as a blessing– further advertising for MySpace.

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