Please excuse me for not displaying my name, it could have huge consequences if I did, respect me for that please.

Accusations were made in haste.
I am here to confirm that Jade is as real as it gets.

I respect that you have an opinion. I do not respect you giving a piece of your mind and not your name.

Comments are reserved for the brave. Come back when you have a name.

/end emo rant

Good on you Chris for raising this. I’m sure you’ve been given a really hard time about this, but that’s only because the truth hurts, mind you.. you didn’t accuse them nor did you source this whole situation.

~ A fellow industry blogger.

Just wanna let it be known that my profile isn’t FAKE…
what a silly comment… had you taken the time to look before jumping to conclusions you’d have picked that up.

We all make wrong decisions from time to time, but do we always own up to them…?

Big Up to Charl/Elan and the team, just once again shows what good of character our local boys have!

subject concluded. :)

Spam is the most overhyped word in the industry and some people should first dig into the meaning behind spam as a whole before slamming judgments on one of SA’s most successful local start-ups.

UCE in my personal opinion does not effect the most part of internet users and does not even closely compare to real “spam”!

“Enlarge your penis. – click here”
“Purchase Viagra FREE shipping worldwide – 95% off”
“Make a million dollars in just 30 seconds”

and thats not even to mention these Nigerian Email scam attempts which REALLY AFFECT people! – I have an email addie that receives hundreds of these, kid you not. enough to make me go haywire on a Monday morning knowing that the 26 out of 113 emails I am busy downloading, I’ll have to sift through and only 5 or so will be solicited.

UCE can’t possibly do too much damage to anyone, infact some of them has been quite interesting over time which I found very useful.

Besides, Blueworld has a function to import your email list and invite your friends. My Gmail has over 80 contacts and Outlook over 300. Even outlook has a function to “auto add contact”, so common sense should also prevail that if “peter” emails me and requests to set up a meeting and I in turn add my contact list to Blueworld, Peter will also get an email from them.

UCE is not quite internet prostitution and I think it’s important to understand the difference between the latter and “spam” in order to conclude this argument.

Instead of slamming the cuffs on Blueworld, I think users that utilize the platform and send invites to friends, should be the ones to be more careful as to whom they invite.

Interesting post Chris, love to hear other opinions on this.

We are obviously very excited to share our product which is getting better and better all the time with the market and used the wrong channels to market it.” – the Blueworld team.

“It’s a case of overzealous entrepreneurialism on the part of the Blueworld guys and we would like to end this activity here.

24.com was definitely not aware of the action in question but are confident from our referral sources that this is not how Blueworld is growing.

The guys are great guys and have no bad intentions. They love their brand and wanted to tell people about it – but have learned that there are rules

to play by and that being associated to a big media company brings attention to every action. We have many plans and budget to grow Blueworld this year and these do not include any wrong doing – particularly spamming people. This is not how we do business. We would like to put this behind us and look to a bright future.

24.com has built a great online business in the SA market over the past 9 years through fair-play and we are proud of this fact. Our values will not tolerate these tactics and we would like to end this issue here. It has been an important learning experience for the guys.

We are still very happy with the investment choice in Blueworld. The guys have a fantastic product and we should have no problem continuing to grow through legitimate channels.”

* Elan Lohmann, General Manager of Social Networking and Media at 24.com (24.com owns a majority share of Blueworld Communities)

(feel free to contact me elan.lohmann (at) SA.24.com

Inflating numbers to report to shareholders…?