MySpace Makes A Statement

Those in the Web 2.0 world know Michael Arrington. The affiliate world has no direct equivalent, but one of its larger than life personalities, Jon F***** (he doesn’t like his last named shared), founder of Wicked Fire Forums, had site members and participants of the show abuzz over news he broke Tuesday morning on the forum. Pat McCarthy of Right Media and author of the fantastic blog ConversionRater.com covered it right after and sums up the topic best by saying, "Myspace Is Dropping the Bomb on Affiliate Networks Accused of Spamming."

A press release from MySpace that hit the wires Monday morning states, "MySpace.com, the world’s leading lifestyle portal, announced today that it filed suit against Scott Richter, for violations of state and federal laws including the CAN-SPAM Act and California’s anti-spam statute. The suit, filed in United States District Court in Los Angeles on Friday, seeks a permanent injunction barring Richter and his affiliated companies from the MySpace site in addition to unspecified monetary damages." Those unspecified damages didn’t stay unspecified for long. In fact, three hours before the release, Jon had already disclosed the amount, $75 million. According to ClickZ, MySpace specifically charges the defendants violated The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, The CAN-SPAM Act, The Electronic Communications Privacy Act and California’s Anti-Spam Statute.

While my relative level of unpopularity on MySpace (wanna be my friend?) has thus far assured me a relatively spam free existence, the practice doesn’t require too much technology and the platform keeps the barrier to engage in it low. The affiliate accusations most likely resemble my only experience with MySpace spam. Not long ago, I found myself excited to learn that I received a message from Margaret. My hopes faded but my professional curiosity increased when I saw the subject line, "Do u like me? http://www.doulike.com/photosf/834.html?w=5". The body of the message read "Hi:) I like your profile!!! Have u heard about "Do you like"? It is very funny site.The thing is, they show you a pic of a girls and ask if u like them. You answer Yes or No. If you do they send them your pic and ask the same. If you both like eachother you can get in-touch and meet up. Do you like me???"

I managed to follow most of that poorly written, trying to hard to sound young, message until I got to the last line, "if yes you will be my future sympathy!" As expected, following the link in the subject takes you to her doulike.com page, one of any number of hotornot.com clones six years too late. The site tries to have you create a profile, and at least offers the ability to scrape data from one of your existing profiles. This particular piece of junk merely tries to solicit outbound visits. It doesn’t use Margaret and her equally fake, poorly written profile to try and collect a bunch of friends. The spam being discussed in this and other suits focuses on fake profiles that collect friends, then send bulletins to anyone on the list. Bulletins have power because they show up not in the inbox of one person but in a special section on the side of the page, visible to all friends. You can’t easily block bulletins or report them as spam the way you can a message sent to your MySpace inbox. Many of the messages on bulletins qualify as promotional in nature, especially if you have bands as friends. Those messages though have some direct relevance to the profile, so while junk to some people, they aren’t quite spam.

In my opinion, one of the most intriguing aspects to the suit comes in the first line of the release. According to WickedFire thread, MySpace has targeted upwards of 20 networks and many affiliates. Approximately half of the networks have already received papers, but the biggest suit, doesn’t target any of the twenty-plus companies, it targets a person, Scott Richter, CEO of Media Empire, the parent brand to industry stalwart and somewhat infamous OptInRealBig along with CPAEmpire, the successful, email publisher friendly affiliate network. Of all people in the online marketing space, I would wager that Mr. Richter can handle controversy and litigation among the best. Bigger and more litigious companies have sued him in the past including Elliot Spitzer and Microsoft – at the same time.

Scott Richter has jokingly referred to himself in the past as the Spam King, more in recognition of the high volume email that his company and his affiliates have sent. Judging from past behavior, he takes it in stride, even agreeing to appear and be ridiculed on the Daily Show for his commercial emailing activities and success. His jovialness and sense of humor also comes through in a mini-site the company designed to track the weight loss between Mr. Richter and a fellow employee who competed in a 14 week fitness challenge (both contestants lost more than 30 lbs). Don’t underestimate him or his companies though. He has not only survived but thrived where others have had to close up shop. He came away relatively unscathed by Microsoft and Mr. Spitzer, paying a $7 million fine but avoiding any formal wrongdoing. Equally impressive, he managed to have his name removed from Spamhaus’ Registry of Known Spam Operations. In other words, the "Spam King" is no more. That title still belongs to Sanford Wallace.

Did Scott Richter spam MySpace? I doubt it. That would be the equivalent of saying Google creates click fraud to increase its revenues. If Scott and Media Breakway had direct involvement, I agree with Pat McCarthy when he writes, "If Myspace sent them cease and desist letters and they continued to do this, you can’t blame Myspace for getting a bit upset here." I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that MySpace has no intention of collecting or even the confidence they can win. When you want to instill fear in others, you go after the main guy. Scott is that figure heat. But much like the war on terror, it’s not the one targeted that usual takes the fall (Osama anyone?). In this case, it’s the smaller networks that have to worry. They too might not have any true culpability, and it might play out similar to the Synergy6 lawsuit from several years ago, one where Justin Champion ultimately won. Unfortunately, it cost him that business in the process.