At 6:40 pm last night, a RockYou employee sent out an email to RockYou’s entire existing and potential advertising partners - 450 people in all. The email itself was a simple notice of RockYou’s new advertising website, and a request to “please change their ad tags to reflect the changes in our ad servers.”
Pretty run of the mill stuff, except RockYou included every email address in the CC field, providing every recipient (and everyone it’s been forwarded to, including us) with a complete contact list of every major application developer and potential advertiser on the Facebook platform.
Nice.
Hundreds of reply-all’s flowed in. Some of my favorites:
Why, hello everyone in the world who makes Facebook apps.
LOL, did anyone else just get an email from Zynga asking if they wanted a job making games on FB? I love it. Also, which one of you is gonna sell to SpeedDate next? [several yes answers to the Zynga question followed]
Hmm, I didn’t get one. Sucks. Well, we’re hiring too: http://www.seriousbusiness.com. We have really big monitors. And nice chairs. And Ruby. And come on - hands down: WAY cooler logo.
zynga has even bigger monitors, even nicer chairs, and 2 chef cooked meals every day! and siqi is welcome, pending a grueling interview, of course
You fucked us RockYou!
I’m down for a meet up too…Hows Palo Alto everyone? =)
Sounds good to me, I am in Palo Alto until Thursday afternoon if anyone is meeting up. “The Rock You Errant CC Spontaneous Meet Up”
hilarious.
Slow news day?
what an original comment.
A school admin did this once at my college. I saved the 800+ e-mails (about 2/3 of the student body) in a file for future nefarious purposes…. but I forgot.
Unoriginal content deserves unoriginal comments.
whatever.
So true… So true
mikey has time to comment, must be slow.
Please, click on “Reply to all” and include:
- Proxy name, ip address, uname/pass for master admin
- corporate email server and settings info
- current list of all customers and potential opportunities
- detailed description of network and network security settings
- current project list, with PM’s in charge of them
- salary base & additional comp (no need to include CxO info)
- list of hot girls and guys in the office, willing to “go wild” with the competition
- how much the morgage is for all people in sales
- which IM is used corporatewide
how many times have we all seen this happen over the years?!
as ridiculous as it sounds, you’d think email providers would have developed a feature by now to protect employees/companies by asking anyone cc’ing over, let’s say 5 people, ask, “are you sure you want to ‘cc’ these people?”. sure would prevent fiascoes like this.
totally agree.
Seems like a good idea for Gmail Labs…
Bad idea. How would Mike fill the blog on slow days? Fewer pageviews = fewer ad impressions = lower revenue.
Wow really a nice idea.
wow. thanks, all. got plenty more that i’m dying to share, but looking for those interested in listening. ironically, i’ve already seen 2 come to fruition over the past month.
michael - feel free to make me an honorary techcrunch driver and i’ll be happy to kick the wheels whenever necessary.
TCvangelist,
matt
stop talking about it, and just get on with it
Absolutely. This happens all the time at the gigantic media company that I work for. It’s amazing. Of course, everyone decides to reply-all with their comments, which starts a chicken fight.
Matt, you gonna get on that? I’d download that Outlook plugin.
Careless Copying followed by irritating and/or careless reply-to-all’ing… certain to fill anyones inbox very quickly!
hmm makes think if this was intentional!
why would it be intentional? seriously people, try to get with the program.
PR stunt? Just throwing it out there.
Is anyone else bothered by this idea that having big monitors, comfortable chairs, and chef-cooked meals means the company is successful?
it’s a relatively cheap way of making the workplace more attractive. and free meals means people stay in the office instead of wandering around outside during lunch.
“Wandering around?” That’s a heck of an attitude.
hey, it’s a war out there. people can go to lunch or they can be part of a team that wins. If startup life ain’t for you, go hang out in the real world.
Michael sir, you are guilty of the false dichotomy logical fallacy. It is not an either-or situation as you depict. If you work for a startup that has a business model and revenue, you can go to lunch AND be part of a team that wins.
It’s only a war if you think it is, like gangbangers at the mall. Just a matter of perspective, no?
And for the record, I wrote the backend for a startup that was acquired by a 3bil company. Not that it matters to your point or anything.
hear hear cap obvious, i like your style, mike, get with the program
Ha! Almost interviewed there a couple weeks back. Glad to be well away from the nightmare that must be their office!
I blame the email programs. Why don’t they warn users?
…yeah, because what the world needs is more “are you sure” prompts.
I know what you mean Roy. It does get to be too much. Maybe they could get rid of one of the other “are you sure” prompts?
very funny!!!
rockyou, spams you
Huh, I was wondering what Dave Navarro was up to.
Blame the Interns!
This just doesn’t seem like that big a deal anymore. It’s trivial to find key contacts because everyone wants to be found these days. If someone on this list isn’t discoverable through search or Facebook itself, they’re probably not that critical to know anyways.
stop it. use the brain.
Arrington - your comments are hilarious!
I think you should start a thing where you insult everyone that makes a comment - kind of like the Soup Nazi in Seinfeld. That would be funny.
Good story.
yeah Mr Mike ur style has certainly picked up, i’m actually reading the comments more to find your cut downs. go on, say something to me
This happened at my last company. The stupid admin sent financials to a couple hundred investors (all of whom were pissed at the company’s performance) and CC’d everyone instead of BCC-ing.
It was a great way to reveal all the investor so they could join forces!!!
They kept it surprisingly civil, didn’t they?
Ok, here’s a PR turnaround move: RockYou, run with the ad-hoc meetup the recipients are talking about, but have an open bar paid for by RockYou. And have the person who sent the email at the meetup, covered in shame
that is very nice to we might use for http://www.hiadults.com we need some application too
Your IQ is seriously probably < 30.
Hahaha this is funny. And so are micheals comments. http://Www.schoolshift.com
“Schooshit?” What kind of company is that?
what an idiot?
I was one of the “lucky” ones on the list and didn’t receive any of the reply-alls. I’m actually kind of disappointed. I could have used a good laugh today.
I’ve had 10 headhunters ask me if I got a copy of this email. Anyone selling it on ebay yet?
I hope you are kidding
I was on that list… and yes there was some spam. However most of the “reply to all” responses were fairly innocent, merely people on the list acknowledging the list was “out” and taking the opportunity to introduce themselves to 449 others in the same boat like themselves.
I only hope that those who received a copy of the list (including you, TC!) don’t use it to send piles of crap into my Inbox.
I set up a facebook group called “Rockyou Leaked Mailing List Support Group” so that people who want to continue interacting with “all” can continue to do so without repeatedly targeting the entire list of 450 people. For a while last night the “reply to all” chatting was starting to look like a twitterthon. Many have joined the facebook group, showing that some facebook developers don’t mind this leak becoming a convenient - albeit unusual - networking opportunity.
Naturally some people on the list will be irate, and they have every right to be. I chatted briefly with the RockYou employee responsible, and I can assure you it wasn’t a publicity stunt. It was just a newb screwup. And to their credit, an executive at RockYou responded promptly with an apology to all involved.
(previous submission of this comment was filtered by Akismet, or something…)
Great input from an insider!
(Funny that your comment was filtered, whereas ‘Adult Social Networking’s comment still stands…)
I’ve been on a few of those lists, and I’m waiting to get an email that says “Hey, saw your email address on the CC list and wondered if your firm needs any trade show booth design services…”
Opportunistic Biz Dev at its finest.
Wow, that site looks like shit.
A school admin did this once at my college. I saved the 800+ e-mails (about 2/3 of the student body) in a file for future nefarious purposes…. but I forgot.
(I mis-posted this as a reply to Mike’s first comment)
It’s no more useful on its own.
still a shit comment
LOL! The RockYou! employee that made the “boo boo” sent this follow-up apology msg:
“As you may know, I had sent out an email exposing extremely private and sensitive information belonging to you and I take total responsibility for my lack of carefulness in sending out that email. I take personal privacy and security very seriously and will take the necessary steps to insure that this never happens again. If there’s anything I can do to address your questions or concerns, please email or call me and I will respond to you as soon as possible.”
Reply-All: “It’s ‘ensure’, f*cktard.”
“to insure that this never happens again”
Maybe you won’t do it again because you will get the pink slip soon.
I hope you had fun, though.
This is actually similar to how we built our first PR list.
We were included in a press release email from a major corporation and it had all the relevant media contacts cc’d.
So - copy, paste and after that our press releases have had a 50-60% attach rate (compared to 0% previously).
That’s actually quiet hilarious.
Oh and to all the people constantly bitching about “quality of content” on here, either don’t read techcrunch anymore or don’t bother leaving your useless comment because nobody cares.
Uhm, you care enough to comment on their useless comments …
I love it when you make snarky remarks in the comments thread, Mike, really makes me laugh out loud in my office here, hehe.
On the behalf of RockYou, I want to apologize to all of our publishers for the slip. While it was unintended, it was a material mistake. We take privacy of all our partners very seriously and have reviewed and corrected the process that enabled this. We continue to work hard to maximize results but its apparent we will also need to work even harder to regain and maintain trust. For those of you affected, please email me directly with any questions, issues or concerns. My email is ro@rockyou.com (ro at rockyou.com - yes, i’m willing to share in the pain).
Sincerely,
Ro Choy
VP Business Development
RockYou
A personal apology that takes responsibility? Refreshing!
I wish I could have been a fly on the wall during the process review meeting. It was probably something like “Hey noob, you suck at the internet. Now go get me some coffee.”
Good on you Ro, there are not enough people in this world that actually take accountability for their actions. Cheers.
Michael, you seem a bit defensive. Relax. I’m sure most of these emails will be changed by tomorrow anyway.
maybe i should start doing yoga or something.
you certainly need to something, trim it down boy
that person should be fired. they would at my company, instantly. that’s what those guys get for hiring their idiot girlfriends.
Hey F*ckTard,
I would be happy to have you on the Yahoo team, I would give anything for this kinda of press coverage.
Jerry
back in 1995 when internet and email were still relatively new, we were in an undergrad commerce session and learning how listserve could send an email to everyone on the class list. My friend was not paying attention and thought it would be funny to email me (we are both male) and typed Subject: Why? Content: “are you such a c**t?” About 20 seconds later he realized what he had done with the glares from females in the room, the snickering of guys and the FEMALE professor was about to open his email because it appeared under a couple of others on the overhead projector from which we were learning.
He ran from the room and the next day was called into the Dean’s office, blamed ME for instigating (we had been sitting there just talking) and got off the hook (no I wasn’t in any trouble).
In fact….. the other day I got an email from an investment advisor I met with and much of the newsletter had to do with confidentiality and how to protect yourself… you know where I am going with this…. and it was CC’d to all of his current and prospective clients!
Great story. You know you’re dealing with a rookie when usage of bcc is overlooked. Anyone that needs a reminder from their email program is just a newb as is anyone that uses web-based email normally. Outlook, Apple mail, or Thinderbird, they rock and are super-responsive in the UI dept.
It’s *way* more embarrassing to get a virus email from your point man on the VC firm that funded you, because he clicked on a file titled “Anna Kournikova nude pictures”.
I am upset my reply didn’t make the top.
What gets me is the people who Reply All to bitch about the people who Reply All or the people who Reply All to complain about the guy/gal who put everybody in the cc: field in the first place. Even worse are the guys/gals who Reply All only to say, “remove me from this list.”
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