XuQa is up to no good!
I was just checking my email and was surprised to find this sitting in my spam folder:
Hello,
Somebody on XuQa.com has added you to their crush list.
Click on the link to learn more.
XuQa.com/joinitCheers,
The XuQa.com TeamIf you do not want to get any further emails, follow this link:
XuQa.com/unsubscribe.php?go=7cb0726fXuQa.com -
1 (413) 884-1046
feedback@XuQa.com
88 Linden St. Williamstown, MA 01267
www.XuQa.com
I thought “hmmm,” I’d better check this out! So I did, only to discover that to find out “who” has a “crush” on my I would have to enter all my friends’ email addresses that I “have a crush” on and hope for a match:
How do I find out who my Secret Admirer is? Well if we simply told you, he or she wouldn’t be secret anymore
(hint: common friends between you & your secret admirer are listed. going to each of your common friends profiles is a good way to start investigating)
What this is is not a viable way for people to connect, but an exponential disruptive mouth-to-mouth promotional scheme. If you can get people to keep referring all of their friends, you’ll soon have enough members to compete with the Facebook! Which leads me to the following theory:
In order to get mega-membership, why not send out crushlist invitations to everyone at Cornell? After all, unless all of them enter every other cornell student’s email address, they’ll never know that no one at Cornell actually sent a crush to them.
In other words, I don’t really trust XuQa. To take this even further, I have the suspicion that they’re harvesting data from TheFaceBook.com and using it to pre-populate their databases, as evidenced by the long lists of blank names of Cornell Students who all signed up on “Wednesday, Sep 21:”
What alerted me to this possibility is that I recognize a friend of mine, Jean T. Since it’s 2 AM, I haven’t had a chance to ask her if she signed up with XuQa or not, but I’m shooting off an email now. Her profile is completely blank except that she’s a Cornell Student and Female. Also, the name “Jean T.” is exactly what she uses for her Facebook profile! How suspicious!
Update:
Jean confirms that she did indeed sign up for an account with XuQa. So, my theory has no hard evidence anymore, although I still retain my suspicions!
This entry was posted on Friday, October 7th, 2005 at 11:23 pm and is tagged with cornell students, cornell student, secret admirer, linden st, hello somebody, xuqa, facebook, spam folder, mouth to mouth, email addresses, williamstown ma, invitations, cheers, suspicion, match, databases, profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.
on October 8th, 2005 at 10:18 pm
I got the same thing today. I could be a spammer, but I can’t find any good evidence of it. Maybe we really do have secret admirers.
on October 9th, 2005 at 8:39 pm
Howdy. I got the original XuQa invitation a while back, and then yesterday I got the crush thing. The e-mail was sent at 09:00, which makes me wonder if anyone was actually browsing a social networking site thing that early in the morning.
Anyway, I’m skeptical of this site as well. The pictures make it look sleazy (facebook has enough pictures of people holding alcohol containers, I don’t want a whole site dedicated to that).
Thanks for the flattery XuQa, but I’m hesitant to believe someone put me on their crush list on your website.
Andrew
on October 10th, 2005 at 1:22 am
I tag my email address everywhere I put it. GMail makes this easy - foo+badsite@gmail.com will go to the foo@gmail.com email account. That way you know exactly where they got your address from.
I had some similar emails sent to me a while back. These ones were actually legit though - how did I know? They’d included the email address of the friend who sent it to me in the email headers as a debugging aid. Doh!
on October 11th, 2005 at 10:44 am
Yeah, me and half my friends got the same bullshit; and I’m pretty sure they’ve been harvesting names off Facebook too. In any case, as a result I’ve started The Reverse-Spamming Initiative, where we all email feedback@xuqa.com using this anonymous email client: MyTrashMail; and we tell them to stop spamming all our inboxes!
I’m glad someone else has considered all this too. Keep it up! I’ve been doing my best not to let this BS viral marketing sucker people into joining this thing…
on October 11th, 2005 at 10:33 pm
I got one of these to a university I transfered from. Everyone there has my new email address and the only email I’ve gotten besides system updates in the last six months was that. It seems rather fishy as everyone I know, knows I don’t use that email.
on October 12th, 2005 at 1:09 am
I got tons of invites from people I’ve never heard of. I unsubscribed and confired my unsubscription and still got invites. I’ve now blocked the @no-reply.xuqa domain, which has helped. But it’s so irritating. I’m really suspicious about xuqa in general.
on October 14th, 2005 at 6:50 am
Ha! I was just thinking that. And you know what comfirms my belief? Xuqa just started out on an all out campain to bring Facebook.com down. I just saw on the log on page a little message about how the Facebook is jealous of the whole Xuqa thing is and spreading “false rumors” about how Xuqa is an email harvesting site. You’re supposed to copy and paste it on people’s walls on the facebook, but that’s not only a chain letter, it’s all out blanat spam and advertizing. And the Facebook never even mentioned Xuqa’s name, just crush sites in general.
on October 14th, 2005 at 6:32 pm
I love that the thing you’re supposed to post all over facebook says to “support the little guy,” meaning XuQa of course, when in reality they are a much more cutthroat and flashy (and likely more corporately-sponsored) than Facebook. I personally prefer the streamlined and intuitive look and features of Facebook - what the hell are you supposed to do with 500 XuQa peanuts? And it’s nice to know who or what is behind a website where you post so much information. I’d be interested to see if people begin to get ads relating to their interests or demographics from XuQa or its partners.
on October 16th, 2005 at 10:20 am
Keep in mind that facebook is a ripoff of connectu.com and it is currently facing legal action from them. Xuqa has a far bigger variety of activities and ways to find singles and ways to flirt. I’m rooting for xuqa!
on October 16th, 2005 at 11:31 pm
Xuqa is a good site, facebook is a failure on so many levels. While their advertising is a bit unusual, it is effective.
on October 16th, 2005 at 11:31 pm
You know, thefacebook needs stiff competition to encourage innovation. People have been requesting new features from thefacebook for a long time like multiple pictures in profile, etc. But it’s always been the same. They hardly ever add new features. xuqa is causing competition in the market, which, if you know anything about business at all, is a good thing.
on October 16th, 2005 at 11:31 pm
Actually XuQa admits freely to taking names off of facebook, but it’s always when a user volunteers to have an invite sent to everyone on their friends list (and I think it’s one of the main things in Facebook’s lawsuit against XuQa)
on October 17th, 2005 at 12:48 am
The only thing xuqa did w/ facebook was send out messages via the facebook system, and they only did that when the user said it was okay.
PS. There’s an easy way to find out who your “crush” really is on Xuqa. Email me at nkronemeyer@student.gsu.edu and I can share the formula with you. That way you could once and for all determine if it’s a bot inviting you, or if it’s a real person.
on October 18th, 2005 at 11:45 am
If anyone is reading this, I am doing interviews for my podcast with representatives of XuQa and Facebook tomorrow, at seperate times. I will be talking with Murtaza Hussain of XuQa, and Chris Hughes of Facebook. If you have any questions you want me to ask either of them, please e-mail me: brendon@dormd.net
(My podcast is called DORM’d at www.dormd.net)
on October 19th, 2005 at 6:31 am
XuQa rocks! facebook is awesome too…. i use both
on October 25th, 2005 at 9:49 pm
I’ve been getting a lot of emails about the xuqa crush codes. Well a day after I posted that, they changed the formula. The codes are now encrypted using MD5, so it’s basically impossible to crack now. Sorry I couldn’t be more help.
on March 14th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
1.) I’m a night student at the university I attend and I quite literally have no friends. Professors aside, perhaps ten people know my name. I do not speak to anyone (professors aside, again) with a scant few exceptions. Nobody has any interest in me whatsoever at my school. Yet some PhuQing stranger wants me to be a friend? Pardon my skepticism.
2.) XuQa is pronounced “sucker.” There’s a reason.
on March 15th, 2006 at 12:06 am
I have three accounts with three different e-mail addresses from my school . I hadn’t signed on for a while so to get my business back, xuqa sent secret admireres to all three accounts on the same day. To make it even more suspicious, I checked teh time stamp on each e-mail. They were with in seconds of each other.
on May 19th, 2006 at 8:37 am
I hope you get this. So a while ago I got all these invited to join Xuqa, but I never really wanted to. I too was very suspicious plus the people who were supposedly inviting me, I had no idea who they were. So one day I decided to cave when I saw a friend’s name on the list, I finally decided sure why not, I trust this person. So I went and accepted the invite and decided to go create a profile. It was already filled with friends and information. Apparently I was 20 sumthing and a bunch of other random false info. I had over a hundred of them, Xuqa friends that is. I don’t know who they are or where they came from but they were already there …..waiting. I didn’t get a chance to screen any of them. Maybe this is just me but I’m still keepin a shifty eye out. Plus, I’ve never even met or talked to most of them. I’d say that less than 20 of them are real friends or even internet friends. And every now and then I’ll get an random message from someone asking how do I know them
on May 26th, 2006 at 12:22 pm
I had tis invitation couple of monthes ago and i joined this network. i think its just a way to kill your times and really good for nothing but i made great friends and the one who invited me is still a big question mar4k to me because she seems to no longer use her profile and i know a hot chick in our uni in that name i am burning in fire of finding her but she is lost this isw another bad aspect of this site i guess
on June 18th, 2007 at 7:32 am
Has anyone actually created a profile on xuqa.com and checked it out? What’s the deal?