Almost six months ago, as part of a membership-recruitment drive, millions of Tagged members invited their friends to join our community. A majority of those invited either joined or declined without complaint. However, a small but vocal minority expressed that we were too ambitious in our recruitment efforts. Accordingly, we voluntarily ceased the membership drive before being contacted by the press or any governmental authority. Nonetheless, the campaign attracted the attention of the news media as well as the attorneys’ general in New York and Texas. (If you want to read some of my previous blog posts on this issue, click here http://blog.tagged.com/?p=75)

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.