TOS and Random Group Invitations question

LOL I hear you on the memory thing. All good points to consider Sylvia. Thank you

For me it would depend on what the time I spent there was like as well... if I had fun I'd still think it was annoying but shrug, decline and close the IM, if I just had a few quick peeks with nothing special happening I probably wouldn't think the IM was spam, but if it was accompanied by a group invite I'd likely see both as spam (with the IM an attempt to appear "sincere" and hopefully avoid getting AR'ed for the invite).

There's also a chance I wouldn't remember going there at all (someone tp'ed me there, I peeked at someone's picks, or I just was never there and the owners claims I was which happened a few times) at which point both an IM and invite would actually annoy me more than usual because someone was using something I can't remember and disprove as an excuse to spam.

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"Hello (name), sorry I missed you at the cafe - thanks for visiting! If you'd like, you can join (group name) and you will receive notices when I am having special events. Or IM me back for an invite. Take care, madhu."

An IM like that likely wouldn't really feel "spammy" to me and I'd just close it and forget about it if I wasn't interested.

Thanks for the response, Kitty, I do appreciate it.

The thought has occurred to me that someone who views the group invite as a piece of spam is likely to view the group invite + IM as two pieces of spam. Whereas someone who isn't torqued by the group invitation will see the IM as friendly and warm (which is how I mean it to be). *sigh*



That's interesting that you say this. I didn't specify above (because I felt I'd gone on long enough) but I actually do use an IM like this, sometimes, instead of a group invite. It's kind of a judgment call. I look at every profile before I send an invitation, and if the person has been in SL a long time, or appears close to the group limit, I might send an IM like this one instead of the group invitation. I will consider doing this more.



It's unlikely that someone could appear on my visitor detector *twice* without ever having been at my place. I'm 700m up on a 5120m plot, and I'm pretty sure none of my neighbors' places are within the scope of my detector.

Thanks again, and I look forward to the comments of others.

Hi Madhu!

I can only speak for myself of course, but if I dropped by a cafe or hangout, and stayed for at least 15 minutes, I wouldn't consider receiving an IM + Group invite as spam. I find the IM a nice touch. If I only popped in by 'accident' and quickly left, well why even bother inviting me I say. (I still haven't been to your place yet...must go soon!)

I cant say the same thing when it comes to a store, which for me is not a social place - it's a business. If I buy something, a notecard with a LM and some info on their group is enough for me. If I don't buy anything but like what I see, I can create my own LM or search for the group myself. Either way, I consider unsolicited IMs and invites from stores as spam.

I've never had any trouble or complaints when I've sent invites to people that have been to my place. I've actually had several people thank me for the invite. There's a huge difference between sending invites to people that have never been there and sending them to actual patrons.

I'm not being jerky here, but I swear TO GOD someone made this exact same post 2 or 3 weeks ago. I had to check the date of your post several times before I was convinced it was new. Did you ask the same question here a while back or is your post just miraculously similar to the one I'm thinking of?

Also, don't send out unsolicited group invites. They count as IMs as far as IM-capping goes, and I get mad whenever my IMs cap, as it means more work for me when I have to get in touch with customers. There are a number of nice ways of keeping customers up-to-date, but they're all opt-in, rather than opt-out.

While I don't AR unsolicited invites, I don't like them. If I wanted to join your group, I'd ask for an invite, or touch a sign in your store. You are not doing me any favors inviting me to your group. You're using my shopping or club attendance habits to further your business. I personally hate the idea that my habits are being tracked and data mined in SL and in RL.

I'm giving my opinion because you asked. In practice, in SL, I wouldn't say a word to you, I'd just drop your business from my landmarks.

well they are coming in and buying what they want but if they don't hand you the information then they haven't given it to you.you've obtained it from another source other than them..
if you had a reminder notice or group sign up where they could see it then signed up ..that is them giving you their information .just seeing thier name in a log of some type would be getting it from elsewhere other than them..

No it wasn't me Wildefire. If you look at the number of my posts, you will notice I post very little - in fact, one other that I can recall - land for sale. *shrugs* I guess you didn't notice that Madhu referenced the discussion from a few weeks ago. When I did a search (before posting) that particular post did not come up in my search results. See? Even you couldn't find the other post and I have no doubt you looked very hard, so you could have something else to say to me.

As for your instructions 'don't send out unsolicited group invites', you do not have the authority to give me instructions, but I appreciate that you shared your personal experiences. That is the true spirit of forums - sharing information and ideas and making suggestions - not ordering people around. Just thought I would share that with you. My person opinion of course.

Yes, I'm aware I asked for opinions. Thank you for yours.

It's true, we are all being 'mined' for information here and in our first lives. There are plenty of alternatives still available to avoid this though.

I went to a new location to hear live music recently, and I had group invitation before I could rezz enough of my surroundings to move away from the landing point. Annoying, rude, but not something I would AR.

I had a neighbor who I added to my friends list. He sent me group invitations every other day for a month. Even muting didn't stop him. If I wasn't wanting to prevent having to deal with an escalating war with a neighbor in my sim, I would have sent the AR for each and every one. In retrospect, I should have anyhow.

Also, I get really irritated by merchants who go through their sales for the day and send group invites to everyone who purchased items that day. When I come back a few days later, make a purchase, and get spammed again with a group invite that I already turned down, that's when it starts to bother me.

I hereby submit 2 things to the LL wish list:

1) Muting someone prevents their sending group invitations.
2) Turning down a group invitation prevents further invitations to the same group unless you remove them from the "group invitation mute" list.

Hey, I can dream, can't I?

I would see group invites given to every customer as spam.

I do not give you permission to spam me every time I buy something.

Solution: Put a big sign in your store inviting customers to click on it to join a group for updates. Otherwise, leave them alone.

I really don't mind getting an invite if I have actually been to a store. My groups are usually maxed but I just decline and go on my way. But what I keep getting at the moment is group invite for stores I've never been to, when I'm not even online. THAT bugs me.

I agree,it takes a lot more energy and time to tell you off and than AR you then it would just to simply decline the invitation. I could understand if they got the invite more than once after declining but not just one time from a store they shopped at. I guess some people just need drama though,no matter the subject.

I experienced the same thing, plus got the invite at least 10 times in an hour while I was there (not kidding.. I sent the manager an IM in the end, asking her to stop) ...... Wonder if it was the same place

I'm also not one to AR unsollicited group invites. I do, however, appreciate an IM beforehand asking whether I want to join in the first place. Since I'm permanently maxed out on groups the answer is inevitably no.



Can I dream along??? That would be utterly fantastic!
So prolly won't happen .....

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i have went to sims and crashed from getting invites and note card after note card ..
if you can't say what you have to say in one note card then you need a note card with a website and a link..i sure don't want to sit there reading for an hour..i'm there to shop or dance hehehehe

I have quite a different method of reaction to group invitation spam:

I accept.

Then I explain the fact that I was spam-invited in group-IM, and use it to advertise for my and a few friend's stores and clubs.

Even though I am one of the few people in this thread arguing in favor of unrequested group invitations (in certain circumstances), even I recognize that repeatedly turning down invitations to the same group is irritating, and so I keep a record of everyone I've invited, and never send more than one unrequested invitation.

Folks have said the "solution" is having a sign board in the shop that one can touch for an invitation. I have three of these in different places in the cafe. I still find that the large majority of unrequested group invitations I send are accepted, often with an IM of "thanks" in response. This tells me that the sign board is not the "solution," because a large number of people who would actually like to be in the group are either not reading them, or not touching them, for whatever reason.

For folks who say "I will AR spam," that's fine, but I still have to ask the question: is what I am doing spam?

The CAN-SPAM act, which is the US anti-spam law, excludes from the definition of spam "relationship" emails sent by a company to its customers or to prospective customers who have inquired about its products. (I am not holding this out as authority here, just as an example of a definition.) In the spirit of that definition, it is my opinion that sending a single unsolicited group invitation to someone who has purchased a product or someone who has visited a cafe twice or more would not be spam. Am interested in the views of others on this idea.

Cool, so everybody in the group gets to suffer through your advertisements, not just the person who actually sent you the offending invite? Very efficient!

3) If the invitee is already in 25 groups, the inviter gets a pop-up along the lines of: "Kitty Barnett is already a member of 25 groups".

That way I don't have to see the spam, and I can bask in the knowledge that everyone who tries to invite me has to click an extra time which bothers them and not me .

Not to name names, but did the place have the word Tear in it?

In real life, when I order a pizza, the delivery guy brings me cupons for the next time I order a pizza.

Every time I buy something for a large store, I know I will probably get a group invite the next day. I simply decline it. The same with dance clubs, if I tip, I know an invite will come shortly. This has never bothered me. Not in the least. I still tip any club where I spend more than 10 minutes and I shop where ever I feel like at the time.

There has been only one place that spammed me past any form of general business practice. It is the club mentioned above. I was there one time and then received AT LEAST 3 group invites a day for several days. I tried to IM the person sending the invites to stop, but no luck -- probably a bot anyway. Muting did not work. I eventually got the name of land owner, explained my problem and she took care of it. It was a nice place with no lag and would have been a regular stopping place for me if not for fear of getting on the spam list again.

I don't AR things I can take care of myself.

Spam is an unsolicited (without prior request or explicit consent) commercial electronic message. Your IM, while politely worded, is spam. It’s obviously a commercial electronic message and it is unsolicited. Someone buying something or simply showing up at your café twice is not an act of giving you consent to send an ad/group invite.

One of the rubs with spam is that it’s easy for the spammer and a burden on everyone else. It’s too easy to send the same e-mail to 100,000 recipients. Here, though, it appears as if you’re making a personal effort with each message because it appears as if someone might be genuinely interested. So, it’s not so bad.

Personally, I probably wouldn’t AR this. I may or may not get annoyed, though, depending on how much I was actually interested. Truth be told, there have been a couple of times I joined a group in a similar way, but that was because I felt the inviter took an effort to check me out to see if there was a reason (more than just showing up a few times) if I’d be interested.

One point of contention I want to point out though is this: spammers sometimes like to make the argument that since it’s “just one message” that no one should be bothered by it. These people ignore that it’s not them sending one message that’s the problem; it’s them _and the thousand other people_ “sending just one message” that’s the problem.

--Hugsy

Thanks for your comments, Hugsy - I do appreciate your feedback.



It sounds like you've rejected the CAN-SPAM definition and would adopt a more restrictive one. I suspect you are not alone in this.

I can think of one case recently where I received a group invitation after buying a product and I was very pleased to have received it. The product was a tiny avatar that was nicely scripted and came with an excellent hud full of texture-customizing functions and animations. I didn't know the group existed before I received the invitation and I was happy to join.

In other cases I've received random group invitations that I've simply declined, or reciprocal invitations from people who have joined my group, which I just consider case by case. I personally have not been inundated with so many group invitations that I find it a major inconvenience to simply decline the unwanted ones, but I recognize that others haven't been so fortunate.



Thanks. As a practical matter, is there a way I can shape my practice to be minimally intrusive if the intrusion "depends upon how much [you are] actually interested?" I obviously cannot know that ahead of time, which is why I use return visits as a proxy for interest. I am surprised to hear you say that coming back to a place for a second visit, in the vastness of SL where there are unlimited other places to go, is not enough to conclude that you're interested in the place. I suppose I could up my criterion to three visits, though that would be more difficult for me to keep track of (I do this manually, by searching for names in a text list; I am not a facile enough programmer to come up with a way to process my log automatically). Would three visits instead of two make a difference in your analysis?

I do also read profiles before sending the invitations. Someone with world music or India-related groups in their profile is more likely to be interested, for sure, but at this point I haven't withheld an invitation from someone who has visited twice or more, just because they don't have these things in their profile.



This is true, of course. In my ideal world, a compromise could be reached where we could get unsolicited or unrequested messages from organizations we might be interested in, without being inundated by messages from organizations we have no interest in. I'm engaging in this discussion, I guess, to do my part to work toward that compromise, to find out what really bugs people and what's more acceptable. It's throwing the baby out with the bathwater to say every message must be specifically requested beforehand or it should be forbidden.

/me logs in and sends group invites to everyone on the thread. (kidding!) Wow, I am really going overboard with the navel-gazing on this one, am I not? Thanks for indulging me, everyone.

So far, neither have I.

You obviously take great care in sending invites to only those who might truly be interested, it's a shame that those who abuse this function taint it for others. Receiving an invite and info should be a 'fun' thing. How many newbies ask "Where are the people, where can I hang out?", etc.

Of course if it ever got to the point where I got many day, a might get miffed, but that hasn't been the case for me.



Can I get an invite? I keep forgetting to pass by - I promise I won't decline

I’ll call it a consumer-friendly definition (one that favors the consumer). I said that spam is unsolicited and that unsolicited was without request or explicit consent. With respect to CAN-SPAM, consent is the key word. Some businesses want visits and product purchases to be an implicit consent to receive ads. I don’t want that. I want the consent to be explicit. I want to specifically tell you whether or not I want your “promotional material”.



I don’t mean to be misleading. I’m not inundated with spam. My concern is that I could be if it goes unchecked. That’s why I take the one, maybe two, minutes it takes to send the AR. I want to stave that off as long as possible.



Interest does not equal consent. I could have visited a million times, but, unless I explicitly come out and say "yes, send me your stuff", any distribution of material to me is spam. Spam has a negative connotation to it; however, in this case, I wouldn’t call it bad because, yes, sometimes it is ok to send something to someone even though they didn’t ask for it.

I don’t have any specific advice. I think your invites are probably ok.



This is another rub with spam. Not all unsolicited material is bad, but spam forces there to be filtering. If you never accept (or automatically decline) things from non-friends, you'll probably miss out on some good stuff. But if you do accept stuff, now you have to rifle through it. Most of it is going to be junk and wasting your time.

--Hugsy