For much of the summer, we participated in spirited discussions with the attorneys general, arguing passionately that our business practices are honorable, and that 3rd-ranked Tagged simply follows the same business model used by the top two social networking sites—which also rely on the popular “invite your friends” practice to attract more users.

Despite differences of opinion about Tagged’s intentions, we did acknowledge that the membership drive aggravated some customers. We also agreed that Tagged had a responsibility to make sure people who interact with Tagged have a positive experience. To that end, in a meeting with Cuomo’s office, we proposed substantial modifications to our processes. Since then, we have overhauled our registration and invite-your-friends processes (details here: http://blog.tagged.com/?p=155), and will soon be adding more new features to increase member privacy.

I’m pleased to say that this week we settled our disagreement with the Texas and New York Attorneys General. Both settlements incorporate many of the modifications we proposed in July. Consumer safety and privacy has been a priority since we first built Tagged. And the agreement we recently reached sets higher standards on both fronts.

We are thrilled to put the dispute behind us and focus 100% of our attention on the mission of Tagged: to help people discover new people and create connections online. We’re certain the recent upgrades we’ve made, coupled with the passion our community members display every day on the website, will help Tagged continue the incredible growth we’ve experienced since we launched the company five years ago.

Here’s what we’ve done to improve Tagged’s registration and invite-your-friends processes:

1. Added clear language on the import-your-friends page stating that a member is giving Tagged permission to access their email address book and store contacts in their Tagged account.
2. Clearly labeled the button on the import friends page as ‘Import Friends’ giving notice that clicking the button will import contacts into a member’s Tagged account.
3. Enlarged the ‘Skip’ option to make it of equal size to the ‘Import Friends’ and ‘Send Invites’ buttons on each page.
4. Clearly labeled the button on the invite contacts page as ‘Send Invites’ giving notice that clicking the button will send email invitations to email contacts.
5. Provided clear indication that a member’s friends will receive e-mail invitations using the member’s name, email address and profile photo.
6. Presented a link that allows members to view a sample form of the email invitation, including use of the member’s name, email address and profile photo.
7. Included a ‘Clear All’ link and check box at top and bottom of the member’s list of contacts on invite contacts page.
8. Added an additional screen confirming member’s intention to send email invitations the member’s contacts.
9. Committed to make sure all email invitation subject lines and content are clear and not misleading in any way.
10. Provided that a invitation recipient who declines a member’s invitation will be directed to a web page indicating that the person will not be connected with the member who sent the invitation.

A full set of screen shots of these important site improvements is available here.

All of us here at Tagged are passionate about building a social network guided by the original promise of the Internet: To make the world a smaller and more connected place. It is our mission to make Tagged the place for meeting new people online and we are confident these changes bring us a step closer to achieving this mission.

Experian Hitwise, a well-known company that measures web site traffic, recently issued new stats for the top social networking sites in the US.

We thought you’d be interested to hear that they report Tagged’s market share for in the social networking category is up by almost 50% since last year. This is as good for us as it is for you. Obviously, we’re excited because our business keeps growing. And it’s great for our community, too, because Tagged users like you just increased the number of people you can discover!

Over the past decade we’ve watched Internet companies come and go, and it is interesting to see how some companies soar into the stratosphere—only to crash back to earth almost as fast. At Tagged, our progress has been different. It’s been slow and methodical. And that’s just fine with us. Since we started the company five years ago this month, we’ve tried to stay true to our original goal: to fulfill the original promise of the Internet by turning strangers into friends.

It seems to be working.

In fact, one of the things we’ve noticed—and commentators are talking about this more and more lately—is that traditional social networking sites can sometimes pull you into the past rather than push you into the future. It’s fun to connect with everybody from high school, but once that’s done, and you find out what everybody is doing 5, 10 or 20 years later, what’s next? With Tagged, it’s all about social discovery, about meeting new people—people you’d have never met in high school, even people from the far corners of the planet if you want to travel that far. That’s what we like most about Tagged: The possibilities for new friends are infinite.

So thanks again for sticking with us. Over the next few months we’ll be sharing some new features with you that are sure to make your experience on Tagged even richer.

That’s right – tune in to BET this Tuesday October 27th for the 2009 Hip Hop Awards.
We’re excited to have teamed up with BET and Clipse to give you a free MP3 download in anticipation of this year’s show.

Hosted by Mike Epps and featuring performances by stars like Young Jeezy, Ludacris, Fabolous and many more – it’s an event you are not going to want to miss.

Be on the look out for specially developed ads promoting the BET Hip Hop Awards with the Clipse MP3 Download opportunity starting October 22 through the 27tth. Just click on the Awards ad and check out some highlights of the upcoming show. Then claim your very own Clipse MP3 – compliments of BET. We have a limited number of these downloads so don’t hesitate to click when you see the BET Hip Hop Awards ad!.

Today I’m excited to announce two new ways for members to contribute content – Gifts and Skins. Both of these were just launched in the last weeks but I have already seen a glimpse of the creativity that is sure to come.

Our Gifts feature lets members select and purchase Gifts for each other using our Gold currency. The Gifts store started with 20 Gifts designed in-house but has now grown to over 2,000 Gifts designed by our members!

Our Skins feature lets members change the skins of their profiles or create new skins from scratch. The skins library started with 20 skins designed in-house and in only a week has grown to over 200 beautiful skins designed by our members.

I love seeing the creativity that is expressed by our members everyday and we will continue to build features that let you share that creativity with your fellow members. You’ve all done a great job designing Tags and now I want to open the floodgates for you to submit your Gifts and Skins as well!

Here are some of our favorite Gifts:

We are dismayed that Cuomo’s office, which has shown itself to be fairly well-versed in the Internet, would issue an inaccurate and inflammatory accusation. We can only believe that they have not carefully reviewed the facts.

So here are the facts. Let them speak for themselves.

Tagged has not “raided” email address books, “stolen identities” or “spammed” millions of people. The descriptive analogy to “breaking into a home, stealing address books, and sending phony mail” to a person’s contacts is evocative, but it is not accurate.

The ”invite your friends” practice that the A/G’s office objects to has been standard practice among all top social networks for over five years. To compare this practice to “spam” or “identity theft” generates unnecessary alarm among consumers.

Like those social networks – including Facebook and MySpace – Tagged allows its users, if they choose, to import their email contacts from any of four popular email services (Microsoft Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Gmail or AOL Mail) to identify contacts that are already members of Tagged and to invite their contacts (including non-members) to join their network on Tagged.

The Attorney General asserts “Tagged did not clearly and conspicuously disclose to these members that these email invitations would be sent on their behalf.” The fact is that Tagged users are given clear notice at every step of the registration process, if they choose to import and invite their contacts they must affirmatively enter their email password and are able to choose which contacts they do not wish to invite before any email invitations are sent from Tagged on their behalf.

We began testing a new registration process, based on our popular Tags photo-sharing feature, in early June. Unfortunately, some members complained that they had inadvertently elected to send invitations to all the contacts they had uploaded. From this feedback we learned that, simply put, it was too easy for people to quickly go through the registration process and unintentionally invite their friends to join them on Tagged.

Upon receiving complaints, we stopped using this new registration process. We then emailed all new members who had sent invitations, explained that some people had unintentionally invited their contacts, and offered information on how to manage their contacts and, if they wanted, how to cancel their membership.

Let the facts speak for themselves. Here are screenshots of the registration and invite-a-friend process that Attorney General Cuomo has brought into question.

Cuomo’s statement goes on to assert that Tagged “made their invitational emails appear to have been sent directly from members’ personal email accounts, instead of from Tagged.com.” We believe the Attorney General is referring to the common practice of virtually all websites that offer an “invite- or forward-to-a-friend” option where the name and email address of the person who has chosen to forward content is used as the “From:” line. This is precisely the method used by companies such as The New York Times and by the New York State government itself. Tagged, in fact, clearly identifies itself as the sender of all emails, but some email service providers do not display full header information to email recipients as a default.

We appreciate that the Attorney General was forthcoming in noting that Tagged “suspended its email marketing campaign in June, in response to user complaints and criticism,” but failed to note that we did so quickly and voluntarily, and well before the Attorney General notified Tagged that it was conducting an inquiry of its business..

We are very confident that once the Attorney General considers all of the facts, we will be able to resolve this matter amicably.

Once again, we sincerely apologize for any embarrassment or frustration people experienced. Tagged is a place where tens of millions of people hang out with friends and meet new people. We have members who have met and now are best friends. We have members who met on Tagged and are now engaged or married. To those affected, I hope you will give us a second chance and join the millions of people who love Tagged and use it everyday.

“Today’s announcement by New York Attorney General Cuomo is disheartening. Identify theft and invasion of privacy are very serious allegations and it is not accurate to portray Tagged, or any other social network, in this regard. As a social networking company, our membership is built on word of mouth. Friends invite their friends to join — this has been standard practice among all social networking sites for over five years. When our company tested a new registration process, we discovered that our “invite your friends” language was confusing. The registration drive generated some complaints and as a business that succeeds or fails based on word of mouth, we took every complaint very seriously. We immediately stopped using this registration process, before being contacted by the Attorney General’s office. In no instance did Tagged access a person’s personal address book without their consent and no emails were sent without the person giving us permission. We realize that some were confused and accidentally agreed to invite their friends. We are truly sorry for any inconvenience or frustration that these people experienced.”

For background information, please refer to this previous post: http://blog.tagged.com/?p=4

I am now thrilled to report that in less than 6 months our passionate members have grown our library from 200 to over 200,000 Tags! I want to personally send a big thank you to all members who have submitted Tags and encourage others to do so as well. Tags is now one of our most popular features with millions sent every day and it would not have been possible without you. We will be announcing some exciting new ways to contribute content soon and, in the meantime, here are some of our favorite Tags:

   

   

Tagged is thrilled to be helping BET promote this year’s spectacular award show, and we’re pleased to give you a sneak peek of what to expect from both Tagged and BET this coming Sunday, June 28.

Hosted by Oscar-winning actor Jamie Foxx, BET’s annual award event is chock full of amazing stars. The current list of performers includes Beyoncé, Maxwell, Ne-Yo, Mary Mary, Fabolous, Queen Latifah, Keri Hilson, T-Pain, Monica, Keyshia Cole, Soulja Boy and many more – with the most anticipated performance of the night coming from cultural icon Jay-Z.

A show of this magnitude is not to be missed, so in working with BET, we’ve designed a custom User Home Page Member Announcement to get the word out.

Millions of Tagged members will be invited to check out all of the excitement before the show and also check back in after the event from their Tagged Home Page to be heard. Which performer ripped it? Members can go directly from their Tagged Home Page to BET.com to vote on the night’s best performance in the Rock the Mic poll.

Who will walk away with the “Best New Artist” award? Who is the “Best Athlete”? Will your favorite be named “Best Actress”?

We’ll find out LIVE this Sunday! Tagged members are invited to join the nonstop party, where the hottest artists and trailblazers all gather under one roof to celebrate the achievements of the most influential African Americans in music, acting, sports and entertainment.