Being one of the bloggers who participated in the Youth08 Malaysia Dotcom Youth Search, all bloggers recently received a mass email from the organization. The sad predicament Youth Malaysia have themselves in now is they exposed 396 bloggers. I got the figure from HongKiat as I was just too lazy to start counting the number of email addresses residing in the CC line.
Once Hong Kiat pointed it out through the email, the bloggers (or website owners) have started a social group meeting. Come to think of it, bloggers (or website owners) who are using Gmail can be considered very fortunate. Why? It’s because Gmail lists emails as conversations. If you were running the normal Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail or your own personal email, you’ll be expecting a lot of repetitive email replies – one by one. Gosh!
This ordeal has made bloggers (mostly) in questioning the professionalism of the Youth Malaysia organization committee. While my personal worry is regarding the abusive usage of the email addresses in spamvertising or other possible illegal uses. Even while some bloggers were replying in disappointment, spam started circulating to the exposed email addresses. I personally took the initiative to inform all the email addresses:
To ANYONE and EVERYONE, who starts sending me spamvertising (be it you’re related to Youth Malaysia or not), I will click the Report Spam button.
Once that’s done, you can kiss any marketing efforts into my email inbox goodbye.
Don’t turn this into an even uglier situation.
In counting, I’ve already qualified 2-3 website design companies for irrelevant content or spam. Although the situation may look as bad as the Advertlets domain name expiring, it isn’t. In fact, the Youth Malaysia committee could actually turn this whole thing around. However, it seems they aren’t checking their emails as frequently as they should since there hasn’t been an official reply from them.
In that relation, I now question their professionalism. Though it may seem this started out as a bad thing, all the committee needs to do is come in, apologize and use the situation to their advantage. But it seems the youths aren’t prepared to handle this situation at the moment.
Were you one of the 396 bloggers Youth Malaysia exposed?
[tags]Youth Malaysia, Yourh08, Youth Search, Email marketing[/tags]
Actually I did not count them one by one, but there’s this nice little script that allows me to drag drop, remove duplicates and show me the total of e-mail addresses. :-)
If fingers were to point, no doubt, HongKiat would be the first. It just took one person to initiate the first mass email (just to prove a point) and a dozen more ‘brilliant’ people who followed suit promoting their blogs matter of fact.
A particular mention to Earl Ku’s offensive Penthouse blog entry email. And the few who took time to prove how unprofessional their company is by spamming other people (Stanley Studio, Clubbing9(?), Vector Bros Studio etc..)
Nonetheless, consider everyone affected that only a dozen ‘brilliant’ participants were the ones responsibly spamming the 300+ participants.
Actually, in my opinion, those Youth Malaysia guys have not been professional in what they’re doing in the very first place. The site is a total mess and loads super-slow. They even add a chat box at the top of the page for people to post spams.
Thanks to Youth Malaysia. You’re definitely ‘youth’
You just need 1 of those 300++ to be infected with a worm.
Just 1, is all you need.
i wasn’t one of them
but i already marked them as spam
hehehehhehe
tak tahan la all the unsolicited emails that cannot be displayed in gmail
i reckon one every two days or so
yup..cialat already…..
hongkiat:
You of all people sure would have that kinda program. :P
hinching:
Thank you for sharing the names out loud. ;)
cheeaun:
It could be their server as well. But what to do, it’s youths and the government isn’t exactly doing the Internet any help.
planet:
Well, I’m still waiting for their action on this. I wonder if they’re ‘shy’.
shadowfox:
Oi, don’t give ideas! My email is in there. ROFL!
suanie:
Hmm, I wonder why they email you if you didn’t participate in Youth08. I detect spamvertising or the sort. LOL!
riceblogger:
They could still recover. Since it’s in the beginning of the year. Knowing Malaysians, now hot then cold later. :P
the normal notification stuff la
these past couple of weeks too many damn emails
so this afternoon i just tulan
so mark as spam
tak tahan
*evil*
I just got 2… lucky me
This is not professionally done. Luckily I didn’t submit my info.
suanie:
You damn dangerous man. LOL!
freethinker:
Well, just mark them as spam. :)
wing loon:
Indeed, lucky. Though the conversation has become less and no one is daring to spam at the moment.
Well, I am one of them.
I choose to remain silent and ignore the plethora of SPAMessages though.
My thoughts?
Youth Malaysia failed Privacy Policy Lessons
Wait, Youth Malaysia does not have any Privacy Policy. -_-
Deimos:
Not all of them are spam. It’s just when 1 ‘smart alec’ decides to publicize his blog, everyone wears the greedy hat and expects the email recipients to give them free traffic.
Which is why, if Youth Malaysia noticed this and came into the email they’d be possibly turning around the situation by now.
Hey guys.
On behalf of the organizing committee I deeply apologize for the slip-up on our end. Our team got over-excited in the course of blasting out the emails. Apologies once again.
Joel:
Thank you for coming forward about the ‘doozie’ pulled by your team. Though why the wait before the action?
Anyway, I forgive you since I’ve qualified a number of companies who tried spamming me as spam already. :P
Danny: Sorry for the delay in notifying the issue as I’ve been personally tied down due to the operations of setting up for this weekend. Anyway, do drop by the Awards ceremony. Looking forward to see you there.
huhu… i regret about what happen. Seriously business strategy! Hohoho.. Thanks sharing to me bro… :)
I hate SPAMer in the blanket so much!!
Joel:
This weekend was the wrong timing for me. But I read a lot of bloggers had a great time.
ahib:
Free marketing voice is one thing. Damage to your organization is another sacrifice.
khai:
I stand with you, buddy. :)