The FriendsReunited Conspiracy (?) – Part 1 - Introduction

Right then – where do I start.

Over the past 7 years I have had to deal with a group of individuals who will not leave me alone. They allege that I stole the idea for FriendsReunited off them, and that since 2000 I have lied repeatedly about the history of FR and been involved in a cover up and conspiracy.

Since 2005 when they first contacted me, I have tried to help. However everything I have done has been thrown back at me in some twisted way. Whether I communicate with them, talk to them, talk through 3^rd parties, meet them, send things to them, let them into our office, ignore them, go legal – everything just fuels their theory that a conspiracy has taken place and it just gets worse.

The obvious thing to do at this stage is to ignore them. However, I know that won’t work and eventually they will come back and I will yet again have to deal with them.

For all these years, whilst wasting loads of my time, I have never gone public on any of this. They have threatened to do so several times and in many different ways.

Recently, it escalated quite dramatically and in having to waste many more hours I suddenly felt compelled to start blogging about it. I know this will probably fuel their imagined grievance even more but I am sort of hoping it will bring it to a head and finally get a line drawn under it.

Also, in the last 7 years I haven’t revisited any part of the FR story since we sold up. I have found I’ve actually started enjoying looking back at that time – the fact that someone is trying to discredit me makes me even prouder of what we did. So much so that I’ve started writing a journal of the history of FR and the sorry tale of these people – I don’t know if it’s interesting but its very cathartic and might make an interesting read one day.

I won’t go into the full detail in this introductory blog as it takes pages. But in summary the sort of things it involves are

• ·      A 12 year investigation into me
• ·      A 120 page document of the investigation of which I have seen a 21 page summary
• ·      A proposed reward of 250K for information establishing a link between me and a third party
• ·      A proposed website to publicise this reward
• ·      A proposed social media campaign to 20K students
• ·      A proposed national media campaign against me
• ·      A book proposed to be written about the conspiracy on the “UK’s version of Social Networking” (their words!)
• ·      Use of at least 4 Private Investigator organisations against me
• ·      Private investigators following people
• ·      Private investigators calling at and inveigling their way into friends houses
• ·      Private investigators making unwanted phone calls harassing friends.
• ·      A fraud squad officer investigating us
• ·      Using the advice of a home office director, senior police officers, 2 top legal experts, a top UK crime author and solicitors

And that’s just for starters of what is contained in the document I received. I don’t actually know if all these things have happened – some of them I have verified so I have to assume they are serious.

As I said earlier, I should just ignore it, but it has been niggling away at me since the summer. When someone spends so much time and money in trying to discredit me, character assassinates me, and continually calls me a liar, then you can maybe see why I’ve been tipped over the edge.

Over the coming weeks and months I will reveal more and more of this sorry saga through my blog. I will also focus on individual subjects like

• ·      The illegal things I am alleged to have done
• ·      The history of their contact with me
• ·      Redacted excerpts from the communications I have received
• ·      The legalities of the 21 page summary document (and there are many legal aspects to that document)
• ·      Private investigators
• ·      The ridiculous statements
• ·      Peoples memory
• ·      ISP’s and domains
• ·      The history of FR (of which I have reams of documents and statements now collected together)

In fact I’ve got about 25 subject titles already. I should probably thank them for giving me blogging material for the next few years. I apologise now if I do drop into flippancy sometimes – however for some of it that’s just about what it deserves.

Finally, I am not going to mention their names. But I would sort of welcome them replying to my blogs in public so they can try to justify themselves. That’s what they claim to want – so lets get it all out in the open.

Coming Next – The FriendsReunited Conspiracy (?) – Part 2 – Their Claim

@spankyhurst

BADOO - A pile of big bad doggy doos.

What do I know about internet marketing? Not a lot clearly.

12 years ago, when my startup had only a handful of users, I spent an hour every day doing hard core guerrilla (that should have been gorilla) marketing. I had no budget, no experience, in fact very little time as I was trying to hold down a paid job and had a new born baby, whilst developing 5 different internet startups of my own.

Hands up time. I was a bit naughty. I used to search websites of missing persons and other message boards where people were looking for old school friends. I sent them emails, individually I admit, from me, suggesting they try out our service FriendsReunited to see if it could help. This appalling activity managed to get us from zero registrations at launch in July 2000 to about 70 a day by December 2000. I was very happy with our 7,000+ registered users by the end of 2000 - especially as it was a few of these that started the viral word of mouth that happened in 2001.

But the question is was I am spammer. I say yes. 

The definition if Spam (from Wikipedia) is "Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages, especially advertising,"

Yes - it was unsolicited. Bulk - not really as I did it one by one but I suppose I did a lot over the months. Advertising - of course it was.

But..... in my defence I was sending a targeted email to people who were looking for help trying to find someone - and I tried to help. And in many many cases, even at that early stage, it did help. Lots of people emailed me back thanking me.

OK - I still agree it was spamming so lets move on.

A few years later, a number of social networks started to spring up with some incredible growth. I won't mention names but it was pretty well known how they did it. In fact I was the seed investor of one that drifted along for a couple of years until they used this same technique. From launching it, their site exploded in user growth to being a very well known and successful business that they are now. For the record I was not happy with the technique at the time and never have been. But it works.

The technique in simple terms - when a person registers on your site, they cleverly ask a question to invite your friends (opt in by default) and unbeknown to you (most of the time), the site harvests all the email addresses from your hotmail, gmail, yahoo etc and sends an email to each of your contacts looking like it has come from you, telling them about a great new site you've found.

The effect of this you can imagine. One person registers leaves this checked. It sends out say 200 emails to your friends. Say 1% of them then register then thats 2 more people who register and send out the emails to their friends. Then 4. Then 8, 16, 32 etc etc. By day 21 that number is over 1 million. Of course by this time they have had to tone it down but you see how it can work.

This was used by many of the sites we all love and use today.

And still it seems to be used today. But even worse. 

Last week a friend, who I am helping on their startup, emailed me asking to look at a couple of articles about Badoo. He wondered if I knew anyone or anything about it. I'd heard of it but didn't know anything about it. I read the articles - it's a geo location social network that has 140m members apparently and growing very fast. I didn't even go to the site because it didn't interest me, as it because basically its a hook up site.

Strangely though, within an hour I received a spam email from Badoo, in Polish from someone I don't know.

Then 3 hours later I get another email from them, welcoming me to Badoo with my email address and a generated password on the email. Plus telling 2,429 are in my area waiting to contact me. How does it know where I am when I haven't been to the site???

I contacted my friend and asked if he registered and he did indeed register after our initial email as a test. It seems some sort of email harvesting happened. But rather than than try and pretend to send me an email from him they have gone straight for the jugular with all types of welcome emails.

Since then I am getting 2-3 emails a day 
- 9 people are waiting to contact me (all girls) 
- 2 people are wanting to see my photo (as if) 
- 2 people want to chat
- why not upgrade to premium account
- these girls can't send messages to you yet
- about time you changed your password
- 5 more girls want to meet you
etc etc

Up to this point I have never been to the site. So finally I click on one of the links - whilst writing this I want to find out what details they have about me. 

It logs me in automatically. The only personal details it has for me are my name is Steve, dob 4th May 1962 - wrong date, wrong year so no idea where that came from, location is London, and obviously email address is correct. And there are 6 messages waiting for me from supposed other members.

So either someone has done this for me, or more likely its been harvested from my friends registration and done automatically.

I wonder if they are including me and others like me in their numbers. Am I down as one of their millions of registered users. Because if so no one should believe the numbers of this so called successful site. It seems, doing just a small bit of research that there are a lot of people with the same problem and have experienced the same. They are known as a spamming site and I hear even worse stories from inside the tech scene.

A nasty nasty site.

So, I've deleted my profile. It took me through many screens to try and persuade me to stay - but finally I did enjoy being asked for a reason and they got - 

BECAUSE I NEVER FUCKING JOINED IN THE FIRST PLACE YOU FUCKING SPAMMERS

[Quick update - they couldn't resist one last spam, asking whether I wanted to restore the profile I just deleted!!!]

@spankyhurst

Sports I'd Never Thought I'd Watch (and ones I don't want to)

Not even 3 days in and I've found myself glued to the Olympics. Whenever I turn on the TV I get hooked onto whichever sport is on. 

Taking aside the (somewhat brilliant) 47 hour opening ceremony, I have so far watched -

Diving - ladies synchronised, mens synchronised (disappointment)

Gymnastics - brilliant Bronze by mens team just now (should have been silver)

Hockey - ladies TeamGB against Japan - great win

Weightlifting - got very excited watching GB Zoey Smith (18 years old!) perform so well

Beach Volley Ball - great ladies win for GB yesterday against Canada and added attraction of  watching Zara Dampney (!)

Handball - dont even know the rules

Cycling - great silver in the ladies road race

Basketball - TeamGB got beat

Swimming - great camera angles 

Table tennis - I thought I was ok until I saw them play

and a few other highlights of other sports including archery, shooting and sailing

But the two that I can't watch are Football and Tennis. These are on all the time outside of the Olympics and are professional to the nth degree so watching a bunch of second rate TeamGB players struggling to overcome the mighty Senegal and UAE was sad in the extreme. I love my football but actually turned over to watch the gymnastics. Why did we bother. (I actually have tickets to the mens football final but not that excited about it - of course that will probably change if TeamGB actually get there)

What next - Olympic Golf (I hear that might be happening), Cricket and Formula 1.

Leave it to these great sports that don't get normal global coverage.

@spankyhurst

The Good The Bad And The Ugly - My 6 Month Angel Update

As some people know I didn't do a lot after I sold our site at the end of 2005. Sure, I got a lot of business plans sent through to me - perhaps 2 a month on average - but over 6 years I did very little in terms of investments.

To be honest, I didn't know what I was doing and I didn't really have a plan. I invested blindly in a mobile company (blown out of water by iPhone and went bust), a carbon offsetting business (still going ok), a financial betting site (made a quick profit), a crowd funding music site (went bust) and various other pretty boring investments. In fact the more boring the more chance of success as I am currently sitting on nice ones to do with Pensions, Ship Wrecks, Films and Cancer research.

Some of my rejects were classic, my favourites being an Albanian Motorway project and Ugandan Peanut importing idea.

That was all in 6 years. And I didn't really have an interest in tech based businesses.

Something happened to me at the end of last year. I suddenly was interested in tech again and in particular anything to do with social. I tentatively put my toe in the Shoreditch tech scene (and believe me that can sometimes be a scary thing to do) and suddenly I was away.

So I decided to create my own little Seed Fund and start looking for startups of interest. Lets call it the Spanky Capital United Media Fund - or SCUM Fund for short. I had a small amount to invest and reckoned on getting a couple closed over a 6 month period.

Well this is my 6 month report on the tech startup scene and my investment experience.

First off, please forgive me if I upset anyone. If anyone recognises themselves then its pure coincidence - honest. I will not mention anyone or company by name.

So off I set. Well actually not a lot happened. I went to a few events to network - and anyone who knows me knows I don't do networking. My basic networking rule is to find a corner, talk to someone I vaguely know and drink lots of free booze.

Then slowly but surely after a few weeks word must have got out that there is some piss head who might have a stash of money in his pockets looking to invest in startups. It started as a trickle, then a flow, then a flood of  emails and business plans started arriving in my inbox. I'd say at one point at least one a day. I can almost feel sorry for VC's  and feeling sorry for VC's is not something that I think has ever been uttered in a blog before.

So, the deal flow started, the meetings started and then the meetings started to rack up more and more. This was beginning to seriously eat into my already busy lifestyle (read my Public Resignation to get an idea) Adam Street and Hoxton Hotel have made serious expenses from me.

Over the next 4 months I suspect I've read well in excess of a 100 business plans. Counting up I reckon approximately

- 55 different companies met (sometimes 2-3 meetings) or which
- 35 rejected
- 3 invested in
- 4 giving free advice (for what its worth)
- 5 waiting for more info
- 4 still to meet
- 3 Interested but waiting follow up
- 1 rejected me (!!!!!!)

So whats my criteria for investment. Now this is the mad part. Over the last 6 years Ive sort of realised the experience hasn't been that much fun and was pretty boring. Ive gradually learnt that I actually like to invest in very early stage seed startups and there are certain areas that I enjoy. So I came up with my own 3 part criteria, namely

1. The investment must be fun.
By that I mean in areas that I have an interest so that I will take an interest in the business - these areas are namely Music, Football, Drinking, Food, Sport, Retro and Twitter amongst others.
2. I have to like the people.
Startups are all about the founders. I have bad experiences and don't want to make that mistake again too many times.
3. The journey must be high risk/high reward.
I am not interested in small returns - I want businesses that will either go bust very quickly or will become a phenomena in a year or 2. It must disrupt a market.

Now not all startups will fit all 3 so 2 out of 3 will sometimes interest me and sometimes even 1 out of 3. But basically this is what I had on my mind whenever I met someone.

Yes - I know its a crazy approach - but its mine so there. (Its lovely to be your own boss)

How did the process go?

THE GOOD

I have now invested in or have an interest in a number of startups (I'll let you try and work out from the descriptions who they are)

- Pinterest type site for all things retro (everyone should know that one)
- disruptor in the takeaway service (thats a hard one to guess)
- twitter aggregator
- underground music site
- football app
- sports twitter site
- video messaging service
- bar and nightlife site
- Photo sharing app
- location social network
- and a few other social sites that are in areas of interest to me

THE BAD

The general state of the startup scene in London at the moment is pretty healthy if my meetings are anything to go by. I've met loads of people. Of course some of them and some of their ideas are vacuous - you would expect that. However, there is also an excellent buzz and energy about tech startup at the moment. The only downside that comes with that is the over inflated valuations that some people think their idea is worth. Really really crazy sometimes. Startups wanting seed funding of 400K on a 2m valuation for instance. Thats a fucking big seed - what monster are they trying to grow.

I also feel there seems to be a lot of angels out there at the moment with no experience in the industry - tech is cool at the moment. Which means some people are investing a bit blindly and hence ramping up valuations and expectations for mere mortals like me.

Another moan is that there is sometimes an expectation amongst startups to that it is their god given right to get funding and hence success. Nothing wrong with a bit of confidence but your right to money is not a given.

THE UGLY

One of my pet hates is people I meet who I then politely write back that I won't be investing. I don't think Ive ever done it in a nasty way. So you do that and don't ever get anything back - not even a thank you for turning up and wasting my time in an attempt to get my money.

However, the worst moment though was from one who again I politely rejected. They suggested they "buy" my shares so that they could pretend I had invested even though I had no intention, as a way to try and entice other investors in. Not happy with that one. I may be stupid but I think at least I am honest. (answers on a postcard)

And finally to the person (sorry) who in desperation said "Steve, invest in me, I'll make you your money back" - hmmmm.....

Thats all for now. Its actually been really good fun. I've met some fantastic people who I will hopefully work with for a long time. I'll update again in 6 months, hopefully a few of investments will still be in business. The Scum Fund is closed at the moment. I need a rest from meetings so please don't send me your business plans.

[BTW - I hate that term Angel - can someone please change it. ]

@spankyhurst

Everyone Knows Sweet FA

The day of the Facebook IPO I was asked to go on BBC Breakfast TV and comment. I declined  - I thought what do I really know about it that people would want to hear . I tweeted this fact. A friend replied to me that I was being hard on myself. 


Am I? 


I know I quite like putting myself down and parodying myself however what do I really know. (in fact I have definitive proof of me being a fraud which is coming soon in another blog)


But the bigger question is whether anyone actually knows anything - about anything.


I am constantly reading articles and blogs about my pet subjects - the economy, the stock market, the tech scene, the angel and VC scene, and football. And the conclusion I have come to is that everyone knows nothing.


What really pisses me off even more is when reading peoples bios they describe themselves as "Visionaries" or even "Evangelists" - WTF! What have these people actually done. I've twice been called a legend recently but please - I got lucky with some website over a decade ago and done nothing since. Surely they meant a Leg End (or knob end as I usually am called)


The world seems to be full of people touting themselves as experts in all kinds of fields. I just wish someone on radio or TV when asked a question some time would just answer "What the fuck do I know"


So back to my pet subjects in the news - 


Global recession - economists everywhere are predicting this that and the other - its basically all bollocks as the governments don't even know what to do. Economies are fucked - live with it.


Stock Markets - bouncing all over the place. The standard blurb I get out of my portfolio managers is just full of the same old same old. Basically they can't predict a thing.


The tech scene - are we in a bubble or the start of something great. If the Facebook hype and then slag off is anything to go by then no one knows again. People really seem to have forgotten the boom and bust of 1999/2000 in the tech world.


And the tech start up scene. I suppose I am sort of part of it having done something ages ago and now as an investor. However, I usually start of all the pitch meetings with the fact that I don't know anything and won't bring value. But there are just too many cooks at the moment who are not technical or ever done a startup and are driving up valuations. I have many stories (blog coming on that one soon too)


And finally football. Lets not even begin to think that the good old FA know what they are doing......


(spankyhurst - visionary, coming to your TV soon)

Anti-Social Networking

I apologise now - this is a sad blog. And a bit all over the place when I re read it.


Its something thats been on my mind for sometime, and I have read a number of articles recently about how social networking is actually a paradox for the word "Social". 


Without doubt social networking has obviously enabled the world to keep in touch with each other easier and more often. But the question for me, does this actually make us more social or make life easier and better.


I watched a film recently that had quite a profound effect on me. It was called Dreams Of A Life by a great director called Carol Morley. It is a documentary about Joyce Vincent, the lady who at the young age of 38, was found dead in a flat above a shop in Wood Green in 2006. She had been there undiscovered for 3 years. The TV was still on, and some wrapped christmas presents were by her side. The cause of death was unknown. She had a network of friends and family in London but had sort of "disappeared" of their scene.


During my late teens and early 20's I hung around that area of North London and that sort of made it closer to home. I am still in touch with most of those friends but it made me realise and think where the others were.


2006 was a bit too early for Facebook, but social networking had sort of started back in 2000 so even though this pre dates the current trends, I still think it has something to say about us and our society.


I thought long and hard how we used to keep in touch with mates. The period of teen/college/clubbing for me was the 80's. For a few years I had a large circle of friends, and we used to go out 4-5 times a week at different pubs, clubs and weekend parties all around North London. Nearly everyone was still living with parents so arrangements were just made through a chain of land line phone calls. If no-one heard from someone in the group for a few weeks, phone calls were made to them first, then messages left with parents and eventually just popping round their houses. And even other groups of friends - Sunday nights were regularly making a catch phone call with an old college or work mate who you hadn't spoken to for 6 months or so.


The point is you had to make an effort, and you generally did as a result.


Fast forward to today. The advent of email and so many social networks, the majority of which I love and use constantly, makes this old communication almost redundant. But at what cost.


If you expect to see someone regularly updating their Facebook status or tweeting, do you notice if they stop. And then if they have, do you make an effort to get in contact to see if they are ok. Probably not. We have become used to people announcing what they are doing rather than making the effort to communicate with them.


The Joyce Vincent story is not really an effect of this but a symptom of what could be happening. It is and will always be one of the saddest stories I've ever heard.


And just to make this post even sadder, whilst I was writing this it made me think of another Facebook story that I have had very recently which is sort of relevant.


Back in November, when Facebook were changing over a lot of their data to the new timeline, I appeared to lose loads of data in a closed group I had created. I was angry - tweeted like mad and announced on Facebook I'd had enough and was leaving.


I did not log into Facebook for 4 months. 


In February I finally registered on LinkedIn for the first time. That evening I was contacted by an old school friend who at the end of the email asked me if I knew about another school of ours called Sean. Unbelievably Sean had died suddenly in the new year.


Sean was a fantastic guy. He had really looked after me at school. However I hadn't seen him  since school days. However we regularly chatted on Facebook - we both supported Spurs and as we still lived 4 miles apart still, we always talked about getting together to watch a game. We never did. 


His death was a shock to everyone - he had been on Facebook the night before and his account was full of condolences. However, because I hadn't logged in I had missed his sad death and his funeral. In fact I phoned 2 other friends who knew him and were not on Facebook and both did not know either.


Since then I have gone back to using Facebook regularly - not just for this reason but it made me realise how it had become part of our lives in more ways than I had ever imagined.


Rest in Peace Sean - COYS.


@spankyhurst

What Have You Done To Our FA Cup?

[Warning - Football related not tech]


Growing up as a kid, FA Cup final day was without doubt the second best day of the year (christmas day being the first)


The whole week before build up - profiling the players, managers, fans and communities with special programs, quizzes and news items all over the TV. It felt like the whole country got into it.


The day itself. Blanket coverage on both channels from an early start. The teams at breakfast, Its a Knock Out special, profiles, interviews, following the fans, following the players coach to Wembley, the walk on the pitch, the game itself - classics never to be forgotten.


Magical.


Even moving into adulthood - a bunch of us used to traditionally get together in the pub and then back at mine - a game of football, beers, presentation of the Milky Milky Fantasy football trophy, watch the game with loads of silly bets and then more beers.


It was the last game of the season - a time to reflect on past season and look forward as a football fan. And to dream of being at Wembley next year.


It was tradition.


It was part of footballs heritage.


It was envied globally as the best club competition in the world.


So what the fuck happened.


I could probably write a book on what happened but in summary, the FA, The Premiership, money, Sky, foreign players, foreign managers, more money, too much money, overpriced tickets, Stadium, seats, overpaid paid players etc etc.


In the last 10 years its been getting worse and worse - in terms of converage and importance. Man United not bothering to enter. Moving to Cardiff temporarily. Semi finals at Wembley. It just doesn't seem to mean much to the top flight players. I remember seeing Patrick Viera being interviewed after scoring the winning penalty against Man Utd a few years back. It was 15 minutes after the win and in the background were 2 foreign Arsenal players doing warm down stretches - they should have been in front of the fans downing bottles of champagne celebrating for what should have been one of their greatest achievements.


But the final nail in the coffin to me is having the final before the end of the season at 5:15pm today. Last year I found out they did this and I had already booked a trip away. I ended up missing my first ever final waiting at Barcelona airport by myself. Sounds like I had more fun. I heard it was a one off. Oh not so. I didn't even know the final was on today until a few days ago - with still 2 games left in the season and a full afternoon of other league games. The FA have finally killed our greatest tournament.


I've just been out to town - there was a group of kids from my daughters school hanging around. I asked them if they were watching the FA Cup final later - they stared at me like I was mad. And then I asked my nephew if he was watching it and again a blank stare back and asking what that was.


We couldn't even remember who played last year against Man City for ages and yet I can reel off most of the 70's and 80's winners with goalscorers without too much trouble.


So I missed my first final last year - as for today, I will probably go out for a meal with the family and if I get back in time I may see what the score is just out of interest. Because that I am afraid is what the FA has done to our cup - just a passing bit of interest.


@spankyhurst