brianstorms weblog: July 11, 2003 Archives

July 11, 2003

Ringo.com: Who Are You?

And now, just when you thought there wouldn't be any more clones of Friendster and Ryze, here comes Ringo.com, a website that encourages you to "expand your circle of friends."

I heard about Ringo.com from Marc Canter's blog entry which was in turn about Clay Shirky reviewing Ringo.com at Corante. I agree with the concerns Clay and Marc raise about this new website.

I've got an additional concern about Ringo.com: who's behind it? No way to know, since they don't identify themselves. Go to Ringo.com's About Us page, and there's nothing there about who the founders are, who's behind the company, where it's located, nothing. Try the Contact Us link, and you get a form to fill out rather than an email address.

Think about it. Ringo.com is a website designed to bring people together, expand circles of friends, and generally be an "easy way to meet people." How does it do this? By inviting people to join as members. What's required to join? Personal information, including First and Last Names, an Email Address, and Gender. Oh. Wait. There's more. Once past the first short signup page, Ringo.com hits you with a much more detailed page. Now they want Date of Birth, Marital Status, Children, Occupation, Country, and Zip Code.

Don't you think that the people behind Ringo.com should identify themselves, and practice what they preach? Does Ringo.com really think people are going to cough up all their personal information when they don't know who the hell they're coughing it up to?

The site's got a copyright notice that points to a company called Birthday Alarm, Inc. Okay, so follow that link and surprise, surprise: it's a mystery site as well, with an equally cryptic About Us page.

The privacy policy and the terms of use pages are of no help either, except at least we can infer (from looking at the Governing Law clause) that these people are located in California.

The only other hint is that the site has a "Designed by" credit linking to SowdenDesign (which is a beautiful website, by the way). A Whois of Ringo.com reveals that the domain is owned by Morgan Sowden, San Francisco, CA. So Morgan: are you Ringo.com?

UPDATE, 10:30pm PST:: I emailed Morgan Sowden to ask him about the questions raised in this blog. Here's his reply:

Hi Brian,

No big mystery intended.

Ringo was founded by Michael and Paul Birch, two brothers from London, and myself, also English but raised in Milan. We are in our early thirties, love developing websites, and live in the Bay Area. Over the years we have worked on a number of projects, including:

www.BirthdayAlarm.com
www.LemonLink.com
www.BabySittingCircle.com
www.RudeMountain.com
www.iReadTheNewsToday.com

We're tireless entrepreneurs hoping to do well in life :)

You got as far as finding my name in WHO IS, a quick Google search would probably quickly lead you to my bio at www.morgansowden.com.

Thanks for the nice blog, and feel free to email me for further clarification.

Warm Regards
Morgan

Posted by brian at 08:11 PM | Comments (1)

Google Elections

If Google results determined the 2004 presidential election, and the election were held today...

Bush 2004	913,000
Dean 2004	577,000
Clinton 2004	371,000
Graham 2004	300,000
Edwards 2004	266,000
Gore 2004	155,000
Kerry 2004	144,000
Braun 2004	89,100
Lieberman 2004	54,100
Townsend 2004	47,500
Daschle 2004	39,900
Gephardt 2004	38,100
Sharpton 2004	21,500
Kucinich 2004	20,900

Posted by brian at 04:50 PM | Comments (0)

Winer and Pilgrim: Get a Room

This silly Winer vs Pilgrim stuff is just that, silly. Which means it must be swiftly and firmly denounced.

Posted by brian at 04:22 PM | Comments (0)