ECRUSH

Last updated

eCRUSH
Ecrush logo.png
Type of site
social network service
Owner Hearst Corporation
Created byClark Benson, Karen DeMars Pillsbury
URL eCRUSH.com
RegistrationYes
Launched Valentine's Day 1999
Current statusDefunct as of August 1, 2011

The eCRUSH network consisted of two sites: eCRUSH.com and eSPIN.com. The network was acquired by Hearst Media on December 31, 2006. [1] The original eCRUSH site was opened on Valentine's Day, 1999 in Chicago by Clark Benson and Karen DeMars Pillsbury. It pre-dated social networking sites such as Friendster.com, MySpace.com and Facebook.com. [2]

Contents

eSPIN

eSPIN was a spin the bottle-like social networking service backed by a matchmaking engine. Users would "spin the bottle" to find other users (although they could also search); the site also had quizzes. Registration was free, however, one had to pay a monthly fee or unlock various tools via sponsors to do key processes like chatting or sending messages.

The New York Times cited that eSPIN had registered more than 3.8 million users as of January 2007. [3] ComScore Media Metrix measured their monthly unique visitors at 1,514,000 and monthly page views at 133MM (December 2008).[ citation needed ]

Age restrictions

eSPIN prohibited minors from contacting adults and vice versa, and their administrators screened user-submitted content before it was made public. Additionally, minors were prohibited from publicly posting contact information like email addresses and screen names.

eCRUSH

eCRUSH.com was a teen-oriented anonymous matching site designed to obviate fears of unrequited love. [4] A user created a list of people he was interested in, and had the option of sending anonymous emails to those individuals indicating that an unidentified person had a crush on them. The recipient could then log on to the site and create a list of people they were interested in. If the two people selected each other, then the system notified them of the match. This system is a type of viral marketing in which awareness of the site spreads among friends and acquaintances similarly to a virus as they list each other as crushes and send emails.

Other aspects of eCRUSH

Demographics

In accordance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, eCRUSH shut down the existing accounts of children who identified themselves as being under thirteen. According to a Red Herring article, "eCRUSHONLINE.com is seizing an elusive but highly desirable audience of young, mostly female viewers, ranging in age from 10 to 37." According to that article, the service saw its biggest growth at high schools and colleges. [5]

The "Don't Be An Idiot" Campaign

In January 2009, eSPIN began the "Don't Be An Idiot" campaign to educate teens about online safety. The campaign consisted of a safety hub page, a safety quiz, a YouTube video and a place to submit safety stories.

The company's emails promised, "At eCRUSH, we know how important your love life is to you, and we would never take advantage of your emotions just to spam your crush." However, an April 22, 1999 article in Ohio University's The Post argued, "It is rare to be matched up with your one and only by trickery or bizarre circumstance. When eCRUSH's initial e-mail is sent, the recipient might discard it like a chain letter or an invitation to a porn site". [6]

The "Someone has an eCRUSH on you" emails did not list the name of anyone the friend knows; therefore, a recipient unfamiliar with eCRUSH could very well interpret them as spam. Moreover, as with many commercial emails, eCRUSH's messages contained images that, for privacy reasons, would be peremptorily blocked by most modern email clients – another red flag suggesting spam to many users. Lastly, the email subject lines – for example, "Someone you know likes you!" — resembled those employed in mass mailings from other dating sites.

Deactivation of Websites

On August 1, 2011, the entire eCRUSH/eSPIN network was deactivated by Hearst Digital Media, and all eCRUSH-related domains began redirecting to a Seventeen.com-hosted landing page. [7]

Related Research Articles

Email Method of exchanging digital messages between people over a network

Electronic mail is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email entered limited use in the 1960s, but users could only send to users of the same computer, and some early email systems required the author and the recipient to both be online simultaneously, similar to instant messaging. Ray Tomlinson is credited as the inventor of email; in 1971, he developed the first system able to send mail between users on different hosts across the ARPANET, using the @ sign to link the user name with a destination server. By the mid-1970s, this was the form recognized as email.

Spamming Unsolicited electronic messages, especially advertisements

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Gmail interface

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People tend to be much less bothered by spam slipping through filters into their mail box, than having desired e-mail ("ham") blocked. Trying to balance false negatives vs false positives is critical for a successful anti-spam system. As servers are not able to block all spam there are some tools for individual users to help control over this balance.

A cold email is an unsolicited e-mail that is sent to a receiver without prior contact. It could also be defined as the email equivalent of cold calling. Cold emailing is a subset of email marketing and differs from transactional and warm emailing.

References

  1. "Hearst Magazines Announces Acquisition of eCRUSH.com, INC". Hearst Magazines Digital Media. Archived from the original on January 27, 2007. Retrieved 2007-03-01.
  2. "Hearst Corp. buys Chicago's eCrush". Crain's Chicago Business. Retrieved March 2, 2007.
  3. Siklos, Richard (January 21, 2007). "Big Media's Crush on Social Networking". The New York Times. Retrieved March 2, 2007.
  4. Stern, Daniel (February 14, 2001). "Be Mine Online". The Cavalier Daily. Archived from the original on December 12, 2008. Retrieved March 2, 2007.
  5. Yamada, Ken. "Shop Talk: The Web has an eCrush". Red Herring. Archived from the original on April 5, 2006. Retrieved March 1, 2007.
  6. Elig, Jenny and Harvilla, Rob: "Even computers won't make match-making easy". The Post. April 22, 1999. Retrieved March 1, 2007.
  7. "A Message for eSPIN Users". Seventeen.com. July 27, 2011. Retrieved April 25, 2017.