Ammado spams a lot of Irish bloggers but it’s for a good cause so that’s ok apparently. They also lecture me in the comments of Justin’s blog. Think of the children. Fuck you Ammado and your fucking vapourware website.
So in case you didn’t see it on Michele’s blog or Justin’s, Ammado a social network for NGOs or some such thing decided to whore their site in the guise of an appeal for help with the UNHCR. A long list of bloggers were targeted because what, we give a shit? Not me.
This is the excuse and non-apology left on Justin’s blog, though they called him Jason. They got his email right but failed to do the same in the comments. Fucktards:
My name is Anna Kupka and I am part of the ammado team. On behalf of ammado I would like to apologize to you and those who feel that ammado spammed them with unsolicited emails. We sent out an appeal to the blogosphere as we believe that you guys are in the best position to spread the word about the humanitarian crises which are happening around the world.
We didn’t expect that this appeal would be regarded as spam and were obviously mistaken in this assumption. Our sincerest apologies for this – we will do our very best to make sure that this doesn’t happen again. We are still in beta (redesigning the site right now which will be launched in June). Processes have yet to be optimized and as we aspire to continue to be a site which wins people’s trust, we will do our very best to avoid a repeat of this situation. Please feel free to contact me anytime if you want to discuss further, best regards, Anna
What a load of bollox. If you talk yourself up at the IIA Congress and all over the press over the past few months as having a clue about people and the web you have no excuse whatsoever for spamming and for your lack of understanding of one of the most basic tenets of the Internet. The Beta excuse is insulting and the non-apology apology is bad too. How come the apologies didn’t come from Peter Conlon since he sent the email or did he? If he didn’t then I think that new consumer law and false representations could get these shills into further trouble. As is I’ll be making a complaint to my friends in the Data Privacy Commissioner’s office and contacting whatever the nearest UNHCR office is and asking them to confirm they gave permission for the spamming. I’m sure the search engine hit of the three blog posts (so far) about this will also leave a sting. (Justin’s Ammado post is already 3rd in Google.)
I wonder will Ammado publicly respond to the following questions:
Where did you get my email address and everyone elses? Did you harvest them? Who sanctioned this?
How are my details stored?
Who sent the email?
While Pat Phelan is more forgiving, like he was when iFoods spammed a load of bloggers (yet again) (cos he’s of the nice guy breed) I will not be. Spam is a serious issue that is not considered by the many morons who decide to start a web business and who seem to think that a blogger and their email address is another business tool that can be used and abused in any which way to make them money. Around the same time as the Ammado spam I got a very nice email from a guy also with a web service which was personalised and solicited an opinion from me, not suggested I blog about some UNHCR stuff which will also help spread the word about spammado. I’ll give some time to that guy, Ammado have only increased the dislike I have for them after their second comment on Justin’s blog. Expect nothing less from spammers without a clue about technology.
[…] I’ve been spammed by Ammado today and I’m very angry about it. I’m not the only one, there’s whole circle of people that were spammed with this mail – Donncha, Justin, Michele and Damien. […]
I think Damien you’ve hit on a very important part of this – how a social networking company communicates with its members or its audience.
I’ve never been impressed by Ammado, despite them being Irish, their very worthy goal and their ideas. Their site is not intuitive, it does not fulfill its task of connecting me with the charities I’ve signed to support, it does not send me interesting emails and above all it doesn’t value me as a member by making their service easier and more friendly to use.
Ammado wants to be the social network used by all charities to connect them, whereas somewhere like UnLtdWorld.com wants to help people connect to charities and provides them with the tools to do so. They care about their members, they stay in contact and their site works. That’s all it needs to do.
I’m at a loss to know what Ammado thought they were going to achieve by emailing bloggers about the campaign. Was it simply for a link? There are better ways to go about it. As you say, it’s about the personalisation. Was there any unique content to be had? Was there an exclusive look at the crisis targeted at the readers of blogs in a way that would engage them, to make them interested, passionate, to do something?
Or was this just another tick-the-box-on-the-marketing-checklist exercise, poorly executed and thought out resulting in far more negative feedback?
it will be interesting to see how they react.
I didn’t get spammed at all. I feel so left out.
Same here, Twenty 🙁
A couple of Irish companies have spammed me recently – but no, nothing from Ammado.
It’s a little hard to believe that no-one thought this wouldn’t go down well. I mean, the stated objective was to “create a buzz in the blogosphere” (is that really a word?) and I guess it has done that – not to mention spread a lot of ill-will and mistrust within 24 hours.
Baffling.
And to make it worse, they left some people out which has to hurt the ego 😉
[…] | Tagged as: Blogging, Irish Blog Awards, More Money than sense, Social Media Oh I’m one of the special ones to get spammed. I got an email today targeted at bloggers from ammado about themselves and […]
I got this mail through the Limerick Blogger address (the new one) and while I am not sure if the old one is registered with amado, I doubt it as I had never heard of it until now, the new one definately isn’t so it is not like they are sending messages to their subscribers, they must have been collecting addresses before sending out this bulk mail.
[…] day, another spam. They also spammed Donncha, Michele and Damien, so it sounds like they’re doing the rounds of the Irish […]
On a related note. Section 5.2 of the Individual User Agreement for Ammado?
ERROR!
“you are granting to Ammado a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable licence…
You waive any and all moral rights that may subsist in any materials and information that you provide to Ammado.”
Eh, no thanks.
Funny, there are 3 or 4 blogs full of complains about ammado, and all these bloggers support each other…
They got one stupid e-mail from a company who wants to do something good, who tries to help others and in return ammado got bunch of crying and moaning small kids…
I would like to suggest you something, instead of wasting your time on pointless discussion what ammado has done, I suggest you taking your geek butts and do something constructive….
Everyone get fu** spam – buy penis enlargment, viagra, new shoes from china…so what, that’s the dark side of the internet.
ammado is not trying to sell themselves, ALL THEY TRYING TO DO IS HELP! ! !
I have a lovely butt so I’m told. Won’t someone think of the children. d. = dominik and I’ll name that IP in one!
yes, you are right d. stands for Dominik.
and sorry, if I offended somebody, it’s just it made me angry.
This whole discussion about spam/not spam.
I am part of ammado’s team and yes we have made a mistake but who doesn’t – sorry…
it happened, we cannot back the time…all we can say,…it won’t happen again.
‘ammado is not trying to sell themselves’
um, actually, they’re a business, in the business of making money — not a charity themselves, last time I looked. It certainly looks like ammado would benefit from the advertising they were asking us to provide.
Also, are you suggesting we haven’t “done something constructive”, “d.”? How do you know?
[…] Damien’s [parental guidance!! Warning this blog carries strong language] […]
[…] on the links below you are reading the comments of those bloggers and not mine). Justin Mason, Damien Mulley he pulls no punches so be warned!, Michelle Neylon, Suzy […]
@Dominik Have your superiors authorised your fakery on my blog and on Suzy’s?
Consider your actions at pretending to be someone else to start with an act of fraud. The National Consumer Agency is now added to the list of people I’m making complaints to.
Damien, sorry for filling this post but feel both for Dominik and anyone else reading who doesn’t know how to deal with a situation like this, this might be important.
So hello Dominik (and everyone). I’m Darragh.
So Ammado is “trying to help” and “not spam” and “has made a mistake”. Well it’s good of you to admit that. However, on the already-referred-to blog this was the Ammado response:
1. On behalf of ammado I would like to apologize to you and those who feel that ammado spammed them with unsolicited emails.
2. We sent out an appeal to the blogosphere as we believe that you guys are in the best position to spread the word about the humanitarian crises which are happening around the world.
3. We didn’t expect that this appeal would be regarded as spam and were obviously mistaken in this assumption.
1. The affected bloggers didn’t FEEL it was SPAM – it was SPAM. As Alexia said over here, the email wasn’t personalised, didn’t greet her personally and wasn’t relevant. She hadn’t signed up for it. That is a SPAM email.
As Suzy said as well, the email should have been sent to her after reading her blog and finding out “who I am and what I write about and the many many things I am interested in and draw attention to?”
2. The “blogosphere” doesn’t really exist, except as a word. So don’t send things there. Send them to the bloggers – the people who write for the audience of commenters they have. As I said above, get to know the people you are targeting and how to connect with them.
It was also pointed out that bloggers were in the best position to spread the word, but Ammado didn’t have it on their blog until less than an hour ago.
3. The word “assumption” is not a nice one in this regard, and is a bit vague. It could be read that Ammado assumed bloggers would help and just didn’t want to.
It’s not that they didn’t want to. They just didn’t want to be spammed.
I would like to suggest you something, instead of wasting your time on pointless discussion what ammado has done, I suggest you taking your geek butts and do something constructive…
Firstly, as good as Ammado are, you are not there yet. Please remember that. You need support of new members, of supporters, of advocates and ambassadors. Just because you build a site that SAYS it does something doesn’t mean it actually does. This has left an unfortunate taste in peoples’ mouths about Ammado – not really what you do overall, but how you’ve reacted to it.
Here is my “constructive” thing: How to react when something like this happens:
1. Apologise quickly and publicly. It took Ammado far too long to do this
2. Apologise directly to the bloggers, anticipating and answering their questions (as Damien has above) and – here’s where it’s important – allow them to publish your response on their blog.
3. Do not forget that bloggers – like your members – are still people in front of a keyboard. They like to be asked to help. Not get some press release pumped in front of them. There should be exclusive content, a contact email address, explanations on why the campaign is running etc – because the story is important and why Ammado is involved is important.
Not everyone knows who Ammado is or what you’re trying to do. Explaining that would help.
4. The apology should come from someone senior with responsibility for communication. It should be sincere.
5. It is important to realise that no one is attacking Ammado and what they’re trying to do, just how they’ve done it in the way they’ve done it. Of course it’s a mistake. Of course you’re sorry. But you also have to take all this feedback as constructive and THANK THE PEOPLE for helping to make your site, your process and your communications better.
6. How about you write a blog post inviting bloggers to get exclusive updates on what you’re doing and so, when something like this campaign comes around again, if people think they’d be interested in it, they can talk about it.
7. And finally – don’t be at all disheartened. Continue trying to do your “good thing” and change the world. Just remember the people out there.
Best regards
Darragh
Fantastic comment Darragh but I don’t for a second believe Dominik. His nasty attitude on more than this blog says it all about SPAmmado.
Excellent response Darragh. That’s a blog post in its self. You should have posted that one on your own blog 🙂
@Damien – thank you indeed. I suppose it’s different for me in that I wasn’t spammed, but, in fairness to them, how frustrating must it be to be passionately involved in something with a worthy goal and to believe it will change the world (somehow) only to have a stupidly thought out email “ruin” it? It’s easy to see how it’s easy to knee-jerk react (I learned the value of saying sorry quickly the had way) but the new rules of this emerging communication should be remembered. I think what might be good for them to do is hire you to give their team a workshop on what to do…
@Cormac – thank you! I had thought of doing it on mine but I didn’t want to be seen to be blogging for the sake of it, or riding on someone else’s story. Plus I reckon they wouldn’t appreciate ANOTHER post about their mistake!
I think also it’s important to keep it all together for future reference. I sincerely hope they – and others – learn the important lessons from this post and what (not) to do. If they look at it as constructive criticism it’s very valuable and much better than some “consultant” could provide.
As I said they should realise that bloggers don’t “hate” them or aren’t anti-ammado. They’re anti spam. The simplest example being Damien allowing my comment and suggestions be published here – if if was completely anti them he wouldn’t do that, would he?
They need to say sorry, to learn the lesson and to continue on. And maybe not let Dominik comment on blogs for a while. 😉
You should email that around to your colleagues so Cormac. Did you have anything to do with gathering the names and email addresses of the bloggers who were spammed by the way?
Hi Damien,
I had absolutely nothing to do with it. I don’t work in the marketing department. I have being blogging myself long enough myself to know how the community would react to this type of communication.
Are you as offended as Conor O’Neill for being left out then? 🙂
Yeah, I’m surprised to have been omitted!
I think Conor will get over it. He was a bit peed off about being left out of the ‘TO’ field in the ifoods episode last week as well if I recall. He is a very needy chap!
He’s not a blogger for nothing.
Talking of iFoods — they’re sponsoring a bbq in the Digital Hub in a couple of weeks. I’m looking forward to a feed of spam fritters 😉
“2. The “blogosphere†doesn’t really exist, except as a word. So don’t send things there.”
Darragh, let me know when you get these t-shirts printed up, I want one. 😀
You do the design sir, I’ll get the credit card dusted off 😉
@darragh – you can get a free tshirt shop 🙂
Great comment Darragh, Again !
Be good
Conor
Ive never come across such a bunch of useful miserable whine about anything they can morons.
Get a life and keep your whining to yourselves. Whats wrong, bullied at school?
[…] 5. For charity, but… We’ve only just caught up with The Ammado Giving Circle, and hey – we’re impressed. Even if they did piss off Sir Mulley. […]
[…] clumsy, clumsy. It seems ammado has managed to create completely the wrong sort of buzz among Irish bloggers by spamming them with bulk unsolicited emails. It doesn’t matter how important or deserving […]
Spammado are now in big financial woes
http://www.independent.ie/business/world/social-networking-site-in-euro48m-loss-2291854.html