Sabrina Dent: Freelance web designer, developer and internet marketer living in Cork, Ireland with one dog and a husband in no particular order.
Oh Moli You Heartbreaker, You
I was greatly cheered today by the news that Dublin based Irish start-up MOLI has received $30M in funding. I was also to no small degree baffled, as neither I nor several other Irelandias on Twitter had ever heard of them when the news came through via Walter.
I hopped over to check it out, and lo my joy was unbridled. Because this – this, my friends – this is the social networking model I have been talking about for months. This is social networking for grownups.
Moli pins its colours to the mast with the post-Facebook slogan “Control your privacy.” As previously mentioned, I’m all for that. But more than that, Moli convincingly delivers what nobody else does: controlled personal networks. Moli lets you build several network channels (for example, work, friends and family) so you can present several faces to the outside world. And then Moli lets you approve new contacts to one or many of your self-defined channels.
This is marvellous. While I may be happy for my friends to see photos of me from my Saturday night at a hen party, I may be less keen for my mum to see them, and I certainly do not want my business partners and clients to see them. Moli lets me push my self-published content – photos, music, audio and blog entries – to whichever channels I select on a per item basis.
As a concept, this is every bit as fantastic as my string of instant fangirl tweets implied. In practice, it doesn’t quite live up to its potential. For a start, I was a little disappointed that Moli couldn’t check my Gmail to tell me who I know that is already a member. Looking around and trying to find anyone I might know, I also realised that there is a heavy emphasis on art, music and creative types ala VIRB. There is an outstanding range of tools for music and visuals for this crowd, but that’s less than useful to me if my business face is not the arts.
Potentially very useful for businesses, however, is the fact that Moli enables online sales and transactions for the low monthly cost of $3.99. For microbusinesses, this could be a fantastic tool ala Etsy, allowing them to get online, setup shop, and conduct sales at a nominal cost in a visually controlled environment with Paypal or Google Checkout.
And then, while I was sitting there trying to decide if sinking time into MOLI was worth it, given that I’m not an artist or a small business crafter and I have no idea how to find the people I know there, MOLI broke my heart.
For all the positioning and talk of “protecting your privacy” MOLI fails at the most basic hurdle. Because it doesn’t cloak new joins; in fact, it has to be displaying them somewhere, because within 15 minutes of joining, the spam started.
MOLI’s most “active” member, DrTom, would like me to check out his environmental webTV station and products. Lynn would like to hook me into her self-proclained “EZmoney” scheme. (I can only guess how many multitudinous levels it has.) I’m waiting for the bank transfer solicitation from Nigeria, which will surely arrive any moment now.
I am, to put it mildly, devastated. I’m about to set up a channel called Spammers and admit these new “friends” of mine while we await the next flight from the African subcontinent, but really, I’m pissed. This is a great idea, a spanking design, a pretty good UI with a few small issues, and a bastion of everything that is wrong with the internet.
Moli, you wooed me, you hooked me, and then you broke my heart.
By email.
Bitch.
Update 1 | Commenter Hawk5721 comes from a Moli IP
Update 2 | Hawk5721 is Moli.com’s Director of Customer Service
29 Jan 2008
| In: Ireland + Social Networks + Technology | Tags:MOLI.com
Arf! Tried it a few hours ago after reading a mention of its launch and impressive funding figures.
Never heard of ‘em before? Check
Impressed with the privacy tagline? Check
Nice UI design? Check
Insta-spam from Dr. Tom? Check
Lynn hasn’t contacted me yet …
29.01.2008, 9:41 pmMOLI is awesome. Exactly what grown ups and business have been waiting for. No kids spamming. The only thing i got when i signed up was a few friend request which is a good thing.
29.01.2008, 9:45 pmHawk, honey, shilling is one of those few areas where transparency is not a good thing.
“Friend requests” from people you don’t know? Are spam.
Nouns, just wait. She’s currently investing her MLM earnings, but I’m sure she’ll be right back at ya.
Sabrina just asked me about the originating IP from which the “Hawk” comment was posted.
According to iptools.com:
You absolute fucking whore.
29.01.2008, 10:11 pmAnd illiterate with it, I note.
Twunt.
29.01.2008, 10:14 pmSo friends request that can be denied easily or blocked just dont seem like spam to me. How many we talking about? Just think you should give it a chance. As far as where i work of course i want to stick up for the company that is going to change the market place. But i see you have some high class people with great vocabulary as friends.
29.01.2008, 10:23 pmGoodness, they certainly aren’t getting any brighter.
Is this an example of the brave new digital frontiers being explored by PR interns? If they don’t link to their Bebo profiles then they can’t possibly be traced?
Must write ‘Idiot’s guide to anonymity on the Internet’. Should have it finished by midnight.
29.01.2008, 10:41 pmHawk, nice of you to fess up to where you work AFTER YOU GET CAUGHT. When you are not transparent about your relationship with a company, make up a username and use two different fake email addresses, that is:
a) Fucking stupid.
b) Called astroturfing.
You might want to walk down the hall and tell Karen Lippe over in PR that she’s going to have a long afternoon.
Ha, the MeFi / givewell incident did cross my mind as well but I didn’t think it worth a mention since I hadn’t yet seen the Hawkster’s second effort.
Mr / Mrs. Hawk, you have extremely deftly (and by deft I mean incredibly clumsily) avoided the key question.
“As far as where i work of course i want to stick up for the company that is going to change the market place.”
So, do MOLI pay you? Yes or no?
Unless you’re referring to some other as-yet-unidentified mould-breaking firm. If this is the case, please let me know the name, I have magic beans to invest.
There’s an adage about holes and shovels and digging which could be useful in this situation.
29.01.2008, 11:52 pmI think my favourite part of this is that Moli.com is doing its presentation at DEMO today, and that this fool is spending his time screwing up their PR as his employer does the most important event of its life.
He posted the first astroturf message while they were scheduled to be on stage. Genius.
That’s what I told Valleywag, anyway.
30.01.2008, 12:15 amHawk? Hawk? Where’d you go?
Hawk?
Oh Internets, why are you so cruel, and so immediate?
Personally, my favourite part is that I came across this whilst in the middle of drafting some section headings for a piece provisionally titled ‘Why your marketing (probably) sucks’.
Permission to include this in an appendix entitled ‘Why your PR stinks’?
30.01.2008, 12:32 am[...] a concern about the level of controls in place inside this new network. Internet marketer Sabrina Dent, blogs: “For all the positioning and talk of “protecting your privacy” MOLI fails at the most [...]
30.01.2008, 12:51 amNouns, go for it. You always bring the funny to my blog and you’re welcome to whatever you like. Also, you do not have stupid digits tacked on to the end of your name for no good reason at all.
Err, Nouns?
You can change that to “Why Your Director of Customer Service Sucks.”
Hawk? Daniel? Dan? Buddy?
[...] MOLI may need to tweak its privacy settings. Ireland-based blogger Sabrina Dent has highlighted a concern about being spammed by users as soon as she joined, since the site doesn’t cloak new [...]
30.01.2008, 1:33 amI might decloak, Moli style, soon enough. If I do, I’ll be using every cunning PR trick in the book. I’ll be ringing unprecedented amounts of journalists to ask if they got my press release.
If Dan does come back, I have a genuine question for him. How many staff do Moli have in their Dublin office, and is Moli EMEA really headquartered there, as Silicon Republic reports? If so, what functions are run out of the Dublin office?
“general management, technology development and shared services” doesn’t really mean that much to me, or anyone else for that matter.
30.01.2008, 1:46 amPlease accept my apologies for using my personal alias when commenting to you about some mis-information I believe you blogged about the company. It was my responsibilty to include my company name and title. In the future, I will include my name and title in all posts about company information.
In my capacity as Director of Customer Service, I simply wanted to address, in an informal way, some of the issues that you raised which are well intentioned but do not accurately reflect how privacy works on MOLI.
My email is ddifiore@moli.com and I would be happy to address any additional questions that you may have.
30.01.2008, 5:26 am[...] しかし、MOLIはプライバシー設定の微調整が必要かもしれない。アイルランド在住のブロガーSabrina Dentが強調していたように、現在サイトは新規加入者を非公開にしていないため、メンバーになったとたんにユーザーからのスパムの標的となることについての懸念がある。しかし、今はMOLIがこれらの課題にすぐに取り組むことを願おう。［MOLIのより詳細なレビューはTechCrunch UK & Irelandにある］ [...]
30.01.2008, 8:00 amDaniel, here is a tip to guide you through what I’m sure will be a long and promising career in Customer Service.
The customer is always right.
I am right that Moli.com, positioning itself as a privacy product, has an issue with revealing new registrations and inviting spam. Other people are getting the same result and talking about it, so denying it? Not a PR strategy.
The larger issue is that despite being spanked here for what the internet historically sees as an egregious violation of trust, you still do not get it. Deceit is not something you just shove under an “informal” throw rug in your living room.
An apology to me is the first step, although you might want to read Holden’s for a better briefing on how to do it with a little more humble.
See if you can work out what the next steps are on your own. Because so far, I’m not seeing you or your company taking them. (Hint: It is not just me you attempted to deceive.) If you can’t figure it out, drop me an email. I’m actually very nice and inclined to be helpful when people are not pissing on my lawn.
I’m stunned. Honestly. I’m stunned. Here I was thinking that the web was improving, that people were learning and that the cool sites, the successful sites and the sites that get the funding and are “going to change the market place” are the ones who listen to their members, to the blogging community, who care about comments and feedback and who are above all honest with people. And once again I’m proven wrong.
And boy, has this Hawk character proven me wrong. Sabrina, congratulations and well done on a great post. I’ve yet to read the other ones but what you’ve shown here is
(a) many web companies STILL (unbelievably) don’t get that what we as members/users/readers/customers say is important, especially online! Personally, I hope for Hawk’s sake that PR don’t see this kerfuffle online – it’s quite embarrassing
(b) the people who are put in these positions are ill equipped to deal with what happens. Underhandedness is NOT the way to do it.
Hawk, I’d highly recommend you take Sabrina’s advice above, print it out and give it to your entire customer service team. Not only is the customer always right, but they’re the ones who will recommend you to their friends, blog about your service and ultimately sink or swim you, regardless of how much funding you get.
Again Sabrina, well done :)
30.01.2008, 12:26 pmDarrah, I live to serve.
This is actually an interesting PR exercise. I wonder if Karen Lippe, Moli’s PR, has Google Alerts that are as fast as Danny Boy’s are, and how long it will take Moli to crank out a “full disclosure, total transparency” policy for employees and let their customers know about it. Her background seems to be in tech companies, so that’s a plus, but I don’t see any web-facing 2.0 gigs aside from MOLI. PR disasters move a lot faster for web-only companies, because that’s exclusively where your userbase lives. The slow response times of GiveWell and Dell, for example, have not worked in their favour in the past where scandal du interpipes has been an issue.
Since Dan has (grudgingly) come clean about his formal connections with Moli, a few serious points about this for him. Apologies for repeating what others have already said, but I have a pain in the face from making these very basic points at regular intervals over the last decade.
Lesson 1: You are not anonymous on the Internet.
Lesson 2: If a PR/marketing intern pulls a stunt like this, you have some ‘plausible deniability’ wriggle room. If your director of customer service does it, you don’t.
Lesson 3: You employ PR people and communications people. Whilst they shouldn’t be using such plainly stupid, dishonest and underhand boosting tactics, they may at least be a little more adroit at it. Hint from the dark side: the Internet cafe down the street is not using your employer’s allocated IP block. However, see Lesson 1.
Lesson 4: When found out, stop digging and apologise. Immediately. If you are tempted to apologise less than fulsomely, talk to your PR and communications people. They can set you straight and maybe even draft something for you.
Direct comment on your apology – you can’t have it both ways. You commented twice anonymously, being deliberately obtuse the second time on the issue of whether you worked for Moli. In your ‘apology’, you claim you were addressing “mis-information” in your “capacity as Director of Customer Service”. No, you weren’t.
I suspect that this is deliberate avoidance, since the ‘apology’ comment is crafted far more carefully than anything else I’ve read from you. Glad you’ve advanced to Lesson 4! Hello Moli PR folks!
Lesson 5: You have just secured a serious chunk of funding. That can pay for big billboards, TV ads and all sorts of traditional advertising which rarely bites back. Why on earth did you think this was a good idea?
Lesson 6: Credit your customers’ intelligence. How often in the past have you responded to customer issues in your “capacity as Director of Customer Service” by telling them the service they have a problem with is “awesome”? Another hint from the dark side: people don’t believe cliches & platitudes any more. At least have a stab at telling me why it’s awesome.
Lesson 7: If your company’s differentiating attribute in a crowded marketplace is ‘trust’, notoriously hard to gain and maintain online, please learn to walk the walk. Your ‘apology’ to Sabrina has done more damage than good to my perceived trust of you and your company.
With my marcomms hat on, Moli’s launch timing couldn’t have been better (did you guys pay Scoble as well?) with the online privacy debate going mainstream worldwide.
And then you go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like …
30.01.2008, 1:48 pm“Hello, Hope we can be friends…thx
http://www.PYRAMIDSCHEMEHERE.com/spammingPOS
Take A Look !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
…was the actual first contact she got at Moli.com, which ‘values your privacy’ so much that it announces your arrival to every spammer in town.
Daniel, you’re still a lying sack of crap. There was no “misinformation” here. So there’s another lie, this time posted under your own name in your official capacity. This is worse.
And you weren’t ‘replying’ to anything. You engaged in a drive-by, dump-a-turd-and-run, cowardly blogspamming run. You deliberately pretended to be someone else. You left not one but two fake email addresses.
And this isn’t your “private alias”. Except for your spamming and crapwitted astroturfing attempts, Hawk5721 doesn’t exist. Google, who you weren’t smart enough to figure out would give up your name because it owns Blogspot, proves that this fake nick your using has only been used to lie and lie again on a multitude of websites for the last year or so.
You lied when you turned up, you lied when you got caught, and you’re lying now.
Fuck off, whore.
30.01.2008, 4:03 pmPlease don’t denigrate whores like that. As the song says, they work hard for their money.
Unlike Dan, who just lies, spams and lies some more for his. You’d think Moli didn’t have any actual customers who needed looking after, what with all this free time Dan has on his keyboard.
[...] her article Oh Moli You Heartbreaker, You, Sabrina Dent states that MOLI couldn’t check her Gmail to tell her who she knows is already a [...]
02.02.2008, 6:29 am[...] Sabrina Dent: Pixel Pushing Ireland » Oh Moli You Heartbreaker, You – An excellent tale of PR stupidity « My del.icio.us bookmarks for February 19th through February 21st | [...]
23.02.2008, 12:31 amLol at only including only the comments where people agree with you sabrina. You’re being a total bitch, and way out of line. Stop blogging you fucking bitch.
05.05.2008, 7:48 pmActually, since I’ve now put through comments from you calling me a bitch twice in a row on two different posts, I’m pretty sure you can see that comments are not be censored. Surprisingly, you appear to be the first person to think I was out of line by calling Moli on their shit.
You wouldn’t happen to be friends with Dan, would you?
I guess Tyco Electronics in Harrisburg PA is kind of far from Moli’s headquarters, but you just never know.
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