The first bit of critical commentary I recall seeing about Jigsaw, a company that “provides an online business directory of company information and more than 9 million business contacts” in a user-generated, wiki-style format, was a 2007 blog post by TheLadders CEO Marc Cenedella in a post titled, “Jigsaw is totally unethical.”
In it, Cenedella said:
I really hate and despise Jigsaw. After having spent the last 4 years never giving out my email address, somehow these weasels picked it up off a scanned card and are publishing it on the internet.
And their official policy on removal is horrendous. Their CEO Jim Fowler should be ashamed of himself.
Yikes! Pretty harsh words coming from someone who’s own company hasn’t exactly been the picture of purity either. But on this, we agree.
A look at Jigsaw’s Suppression Request Form (PDF), reveals a process riddled in inconvenience (fill out a paper and send back stuff) and no real promise of your privacy, saying “suppression means that my information may be hidden from view on Jigsaw.com, but may or may not be removed from the database” and “suppression may not prevent the reentry of the same or similar information.”
May not prevent reentry? What the – ?
Anyway, Jigsaw CEO Jim Fowler recently spoke at Onrec to present his product. I had to see if all the blogospheric fuss was warranted. I wasn’t impressed.
Fowler comes off as congenial and professional. And for most of the session, I was wooed by his monologue of open source and collaboration and wiki and community. It was when he got to the part about e-mails that he lost me.
When talking about privacy and people maybe getting upset about their contact information and e-mail addresses getting out to the masses without opting in for such visibility, Fowler asked the following series of questions: 1) Who hates telemarketers? 2) Who hates junk mail? 3) Who hates spam?
All hands went up to all questions.
Then he asked, “Of those three, which do you hate the least?” E-mail spam won or, as I looked at it, was the best loser. Fowler then went on to explain how spam filters had gotten to the point where spam was becoming obsolete. Yeah, tell that to my Yahoo Mail account. Believing your product is OK because the bad it does isn’t so bad is, well, bad.
In an environment wrought with trust issues – $700 billion bailout anyone? – companies earning a high level of trust with consumers are the biggest winners. Jigsaw isn’t in this category.
Popularity: 10% [?]
September 29th, 2008 at 9:52 am
one of the funniest things I’ve ever read on this blog:
“We here at Cheezhead are pretty much a peace-loving group who don’t like to rock the boat.”
That said, I haven’t been in your cross-hairs (sp?) and it’s still funny!
September 29th, 2008 at 10:43 am
‘His Holiness of Thou Art Ladders’ waxes indignant about someone having his email address? What about the lowly peasants out here who are baited with $100k jobs almost twice a day in emails we really didn’t want from His Holiness?
Sure we can opt out, but is His Holiness really going to delete (and I mean for forever) my email address? I doubt it seriously.
Meanwhile, us lowly sales folks in the trenches, trying to make a difference, are out chasing prima donna Harvard grad posterior holes like His Holiness, who would rather spam us and not give us a chance to spam back.
Shame on The Temple of The Ladders and its hypocritical Pope.
September 29th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
Another review of Jigsaw/Fowler, out today:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/jigsaw_profitable_web_20_venture.php
September 30th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Just tried Jigsaw and liked it, may subscribe. Violating the “trust economy”? What “trust economy”? With the incessant spam coming from Ladders and sales people picking our contact info off of LinkedIn, can you explain how they don’t violate the “trust economy”?
September 30th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
@gregg – opt-in vs. not.
October 2nd, 2008 at 4:47 pm
The phrase “trust economy” has become, to some, an oxymoron… In the VC-funded and/or public company arenas, company actions are “good” if they increase shareholder value, no matter who gets their noses out of joint… even if it’s the customer/consumer who suffers. Them’s the rules of capitalism.
For instance, how many companies have come into existence who actually make money selling spam lists? These companies stimulate the economy by creating jobs and revenue and taxes and “all things uncle sam”. Will corporations stop buying these email lists? Not likely. Will companies stop selling their opt-out lists to spammers for cold hard cash that brings in “other income” revenue? Not likely… Will the paparazzi stop selling embarrassing photos? Will the National Enquirer go under? OK OK you get the point… this is the land of opportunity.