MingleBox spams me on Orkut!
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Minglebox.com is a social network that we had reviewed in our india 2.0 series as one of the promising and upcoming social networks! But guess what? The other day i got a spam scrap on my orkut account from Sushma Abburi, Vice President MingleBox.com asking me to join MindgleBox when i had already done so! And thats not all! When i went to her profile i realised that its a spam profile.. in the sense that its only being used to send unsolicited scraps on orkut as all the replies on this profile scrapbook were asking questions like who are you? what is mingle box? etc etc. I scrapped her back too saying that spamming on orkut wont get her company too far! Guess what happened? My scrap was deleted and i was not given a reply!
Click Here to see a screen shot of the spam scrap! Click here for the profile that scrapped me (You will need an orkut account)
Here is a work profile of the entire management of minglebox! (Taken from their website)
Kavita Iyer, CEO
An IIM Ahmedabad, IIT Delhi (Director’s Gold Medallist) alumnus. Worked at ICICI with several of their internet and marketing initiatives and at Wipro Technologies with their product solutions business. As part of the Tata Administrative Service, she was in the core team that launched Tanishq, one of India’s leading consumer brands. Kavita is also a keen Hindustani music vocalist.
Sanjay Aggarwal, CTO
An IIT Delhi alumnus. World class internet technology and software experience. Headed a search group at Yahoo, worked for several years with Appian a US high tech start up. He started his career at Infosys and spent the first five years of his career there. Sanjay is an enthusiastic Marathon runner and Bridge player.
Sushma Abburi, Vice President
Masters from Georgia Tech, Atlanta, IIT Delhi alumnus. Consumer business operations and product management professional. Worked with i2 technologies in the US and India. Started her career as a management trainee with HLL and managed operations in detergents and ice creams business. Sushma is a National level athlete and enjoys trekking.
Sanjay Mittal, Vice President
An entrepreneur with strong business building, sales and operations experience. Worked for several years with Allen Bradley in global sales and support. MBA, Electronics engineer. Keenly interested in the education sector.
Check alexa chart below you will find that minglebox is getting more traffic than all its other competitors like yaari.com, yo4ya.com, humsubka.com, goyaar.come etc.. When i had seen this chart a few days ago i was pretty impressed and was going to blog about minglebox really doing well! But obviously after being spammed i know how this chart looks the way it does! My question to the mingle guys is will spamming like this get you a sustainable business? Im not too sure!
What is dissapointing is that a group of IITians and IIM guys with years of experience in some of the most respected companies come up with a marketing strategy for their site thats as innovative as "SPAMMING ON ORKUT!".
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At the end, the spamming did get them the result they wanted, you can see the increase in traffic after that spike.
Sad, but true.
They spam in blogs do, I dont remember the blog that i was reading, but had a reply with a link to minglebox.,
I had the same experience in Orkut. Minglebox shamelessly spam in their competitor's site. However, it seems to be working, yesterday's alexa rank was 8000+, they ranked 148 in India. I haven't seen any of their ads in TV or print.
Did they get all the traffic because of the spam?! I doubt it. If the spam contributed traffic, that's a bad news. Many other web companies will try to copy that model, we are in trouble!
BTW, fropper's alexa rank is 9000+. So, minglebox is better than fropper in terms of alexa ranking, at least for today. Fropper ran ads even in HBO. How it's possible for minglebox to beat Fropper?!