I heard recently that viruses have officially been classified as “living” (apparently the official “alive” classification for viruses has been a hotly contested one), because they themselves can come down with viruses. Well guess what, folks, your viral messages–your memes–can also get infected. They can get hijacked by negativity if you’re not careful. Remember Quetchup anyone? The developers of the (now defunct) service made a huge mistake by accessing and then spamming their members’ email contacts.

Even the best and the brightest–and the most well intentioned–have fallen victim to concerns about email abuse. It’s a touchy subject. So when the makers of SocialMinder decided to include emailing 15 contacts as the requirement for upgrading to their full alpha service, they made what could very quickly end up becoming a fatal mistake.

Nathan Burke’s post on Blogstring explains how the upgrade email requirement works, and why people have been giving SocialMinder a hard time about it. What’s most important here is what SocialMinder does now. The only acknowledgement I’ve seen so far is on their uservoice pages:

They have a very limited amount of time to come out, engage their audience on our terms and turf, and regain some credibility. Until then, they will get more and more angry posts like this, and their likelihood of success is zero.

If you’re as old as I am, you’ll probably instantly remember this Faberge commercial (and I’ve been waiting for YEARS for the right moment to bring it up in a blog). This marketing model works: get the people you’re marketing to to market for you. But if the message changes from “hey this is a cool shampoo you should be using” to “hey, Faberge can’t really be trusted,” you’re in trouble!