Naymz: A Stalker Enabled Social Network

Naymz is a social network that appears to be going after something close to Linkedin.com's market. Their slogan is, "Empowering Reputable Professionals."

I was turned on to the site through an invite from a friend and have had a chance to casually check it out over the past few weeks.

While it does offer some interesting features for professionals such as the ability to endorse friends or use friends as online references, I can't get past the site's biggest problem: stalking.

Naymz offers reporting on which other Naymz users have been viewing your profile. While this is certainly fascinating information, it doesn't take long to realize, "Wait a minute. That means everyone who's profile I visit can see that I've visited them too." At that point, I realized that this site wasn't for me.

Premium members can find out more about who's stalking them, as this internal ad shows:

If I paid, I could see who was visiting my profile, what IP address they visited from (possibly telling me which company that worked for), where they are in the world, and and the exact time they visited. If the referring link showed something like a company's internal webmail, I could also infer that I was being talked about.

This is all fascinating information, but the reporting flops when you realize that the same type of information about your Naymz browsing is being shared with other site members.

Could you imagine how quickly Facebook users would revolt if Facebook started reporting who was viewing your profile while telling everyone else who's profiles you've been viewing? That would kill it.

And if that would kill Facebook, Naymz may be dead on arrival if they don't pull the plug on their stalking reporting.

Listen to this article posted by Ed Kohler on January 24, 2008 5:24 PM | Permalink
More posts about Social Networks

                                             

seems to me like Google Analytics what once was the best factor of adsence is now common play , personally I'm Happy as hell as that someone would take the time to care enough to look .... Because either way you look at it or dole it out it converts to traffic and that My friend is the key to the both of us being Here ...

ArtByLetters
SRXXXP
James
;)

..

Matthias, thanks for a German perspective. I think a raw visitor count or trends could be valuable without having the privacy backlash or reporting to others what you're looking at.

ArtByLetters, yes traffic is good, and reporting visitor counts is fine. I just don't think a site sharing as much information as Naymz does will excite their site's users as they come to find that their browsing behavior is being reported to other users.

Facebook has offered this feature for years. How out of date are you?

Really? I've never seen it. What's it called on there? Do you have a link?

Sorry--that's Friendster that's had it forever.

They offer it as a quid pro quo choice, where you can be anonymoys but not see anyone who's looked at your profile, or else have visibility for yourself and your stalkers.

Some people believe that anonymous viewing is too easy an out, and have started Friendster groups to encourage all users to be "seen."

Personally I think it's a digital yearbook and anonymity is part of the game.

7. Posted by: Ed Kohler on January 25, 2008 4:22 PM:

Thanks for clarifying. I missed the Friendster phase.

I agree that anonymity is part of the game. I shouldn't have to turn myself in every time I choose to view public data.

Ed, I don't know that I'd call Naymz a social network as much as I would a central profile with some networking features... or better yet, a fledgling attempt at online reputation management. But regardless, visitor reporting is a feature that's been available to the kids on MySpace (via trackspace.net) for a long time.

Unfortunately, outside of people operating through anonymous proxy servers, private surfing is pretty much extinct. Better to surf under the assumption that your visitor metrics are easily available to the site and potentially to other visitors as well. I'd encourage you to look at Naymz through the lens of "how can I use this site to lay claim to my online profile or reputation" rather than get tripped up by a commonly used reporting feature, however distasteful it may be.

Linkedin also has this feature on its main page. It tells you who visited your profile in the past week.

10. Posted by: Ed Kohler on January 29, 2008 11:03 PM:

It's close, but it doesn't tell me who. It tells me that someone from a certain industry or company did. That's also a bit further than I'd like to see this sort of thing go, but may have found the line that's acceptible.

I am not going to mess with Naymz. I have ignored several invites and got another one today. Decided to search a bit and found your post here. Thanks.

Just went to LinkedIn and changed some of my Privacy settings. You may want to do the same.
https://www.linkedin.com/secure/settings

Thanks for the post.

You can also get some of this information when people look at your ordinary web homepage or blog...

How about our privacy? Premium member can see our network details.

It looks like I'm several months late to the party... But I just found this from a google search and wanted to chime in. I work with Anthillz and we're getting into a similar space as Naymz - being a Reputation Network.

I agree that their privacy settings seem pretty crazy. I would definitely not want people to be able to grab my IP because I viewed their profile.

At Anthillz, we allow freelancers (mostly tech and creatives) to create a reputation - meaing they can get references, they can link to their various works, and find better clients.

I'd be very interested in hearing your thoughts on our network.

• An Online Data Entry Pet Peeve
• Is Online PR About Messaging, Listening, or Both?
• Trends for Gmail
• Owning Your Name on Search Results
• The Power of a Good Roundup