wow factor

Marc Orchant -ZDNet has just posted an unquestioning article on the Beta release of Contactify. I'm no ZDNet journo but I see some real issues with this clever little service.

What Marc says...

This is a very nice solution if you want to add a way for people reading your blog to be able to contact you without a lot of heavy lifting. It's also a great way to add a "contact me" link in your signature in forums, Usenet groups, and other public discussion space where you might not want to publish your actual e-mail address.

What Marc doesn't say...

• A unique URL often can't be applied to an Email field
• What's to stop anyone using your Contactify URL ID and making your life a misery
• Contactify's Terms contain no Privacy Statement. Odd considering their service.

I may be missing something, but I don't want to take the chance of having my inbox full of messages from people at MySpace, unknown forums or anywhere else because they thought it would be fun.

Update: a detailed reply from Ankur, from Contactify

1. URL/Email field - your point is absolutely true, and it is something that has been considered. However, the aim of contactify is not really to plug this gap, but rather to allow people to post their links online or offline, and in blogs, forums, messageboards and on social networks, in fact anywhere. This is something that may be addressed in the future, but going by current take up this has not as yet become an issue.

2. Abuse of contactify link - Again, a valid concern. However, contactify is deliberately as easy to signup for as it is to modify and delete your link. There is no restriction on the number of links that an indiviudal can create. This means that, in theory, a user, could for example, have ten contactify links, all pointing to various or the same email address. If one of those links starts receiving emails that are unwanted by the user, the user can merely delete the link, or alternatively modify the link so that it is sent to another email address. If a user visits the homepage and clicks on editlink, it can be seen how easy this is to do.

3. Terms/Privacy Statement - I have been taken a little aback by the speed at which people have adopted the service. As a result, the development of the terms (and lack of privacy statement) is something which will be addressed shortly. The privacy of contactify's users is paramount, in essence, that being a key strength of the service in the first place (as your post notes). This should be made far more clear shortly. The point is taken though, and for the sake of clarity and transparency this will be addressed in an emphatic manner.

Good luck to Contactify and their further development of this service.