Attention all visitors and members of community review website Mouthshut.com: This is to notify that I, Shrinidhi Hande (Mouthshut user name enidhi) am hereby disassociating myself from Mouthshut.com and do not own/approve/support any reviews or other contents/activities at the site under my identity. I requested them to delete my entries but they disabled my account instead-I can’t login and have no control over contents displayed/activities performed there under my name-hence this warning.
Initial days
I was a long term member of a leading Consumer Review website Mouthshut.com till my account was disabled last November (most probably because I asked them to delete my reviews-exact reason not communicated.) This post shares my experience with Mouthshut.com, review of recent developments at this site and few thoughts about ownership of your content when you contribute at third party websites.
Mouthshut.com, in its initial days was a pure play Product review website where members reviewed various products and Services, based on their personal experience. Members could select a product and write review of the same while other members would rate and comment these reviews. One can’t write detailed review without actually experiencing the product or service, so most of the reviews were firsthand experience accounts and were of very high quality. The member base was less and a new review used to stay on home page for several hours. I signed up at this site and became a MS member on Aug 3 2002 and over next 6 years have contributed about 80+ reviews, most of them rated “very useful” by other members. My MS member profile (Its live at the time of posting-not sure how MS will act on it if they notice this blog post)
Though I launched a blog, I continued to write at Mouthshut, because of some unique advantages I had there then- I had more readership in MS than my blog. Within minutes of posting a new review I used to get instant feedback in the form of some comments and rating, while same entry would take couple of days on my blog to evoke a response. Ready readership, a decent trusted circle (a closed group of MS users(MSians) who trust each other) forming a community of good writers made my stay at MS attractive. But slowly various negative/side effects started creeping in.
Couple of years back I won a “Review of the day” contest and was entitled to get a return air ticket from Mouthshut’s then travel partner flight Raja. Several months and multiple email follow ups later, my air tickets never came. I published a review to this effect on MS and both Mouthshut CEO Faisal and FlightRaja CEO commented that they’ll look into it. But nothing materialistic ever happened and I never got my air tickets. It is not about an air ticket, it was more about a promise made and not kept. [More about this incident in here and here]
Mouthshut started adding Google ad units all over the site and minting money. While MS made real money from adsense, its members, who contributed all the content on which these ads were put, were being granted some virtual points (which were practically useless -members can use these points to send virtual gifts i.e. just images of gifts to other members)
I was a long term member of a leading Consumer Review website Mouthshut.com till my account was disabled last November (most probably because I asked them to delete my reviews-exact reason not communicated.) This post shares my experience with Mouthshut.com, review of recent developments at this site and few thoughts about ownership of your content when you contribute at third party websites.
Mouthshut.com, in its initial days was a pure play Product review website where members reviewed various products and Services, based on their personal experience. Members could select a product and write review of the same while other members would rate and comment these reviews. One can’t write detailed review without actually experiencing the product or service, so most of the reviews were firsthand experience accounts and were of very high quality. The member base was less and a new review used to stay on home page for several hours. I signed up at this site and became a MS member on Aug 3 2002 and over next 6 years have contributed about 80+ reviews, most of them rated “very useful” by other members. My MS member profile (Its live at the time of posting-not sure how MS will act on it if they notice this blog post)
Though I launched a blog, I continued to write at Mouthshut, because of some unique advantages I had there then- I had more readership in MS than my blog. Within minutes of posting a new review I used to get instant feedback in the form of some comments and rating, while same entry would take couple of days on my blog to evoke a response. Ready readership, a decent trusted circle (a closed group of MS users(MSians) who trust each other) forming a community of good writers made my stay at MS attractive. But slowly various negative/side effects started creeping in.Couple of years back I won a “Review of the day” contest and was entitled to get a return air ticket from Mouthshut’s then travel partner flight Raja. Several months and multiple email follow ups later, my air tickets never came. I published a review to this effect on MS and both Mouthshut CEO Faisal and FlightRaja CEO commented that they’ll look into it. But nothing materialistic ever happened and I never got my air tickets. It is not about an air ticket, it was more about a promise made and not kept. [More about this incident in here and here]
Mouthshut started adding Google ad units all over the site and minting money. While MS made real money from adsense, its members, who contributed all the content on which these ads were put, were being granted some virtual points (which were practically useless -members can use these points to send virtual gifts i.e. just images of gifts to other members)
Evolution of Mouthshut.com
To earn more money by serving more ads they needed to have more pages and more pages can’t be had by reviews alone (one can review one product only once and he/she can’t review a product without properly experiencing it- so the content generated by reviews were not much) and MS management needed a mechanism to make its members spend more time on the site and create more pages. Thus the idea of “Diary posts” were introduced, under which members could write anything under the sun. While most of the members made judicious use of this Diary posts, few started spamming, by uploading email forwards and other junk in a quest to earn more MS points and become star writer soon (Star Writer is Mouthshut’s way of recognizing members who have written lots of (supposed to be of good quality) content, have good fanfare and express unquestionable faith in MS- No real life gain by becoming star writer, except for a star displayed next to your user name)
Mouthshut content team hardly made any attempt to eliminate spam or ban users publishing copy pasted stuff. Because of this, quality posts suffered a setback- it was difficult to identify genuine and quality entries amongst the heap of junk-this was a matter of concern for genuine writers and serious readers. As if diary posts were not enough, MS added several other features- SMS reviews (Spend 3-5 Rs per SMS and get it published in MS), Classifieds (known as MS Local), Photo Albums etc. Features such as bulletins, sending gifts to other members etc were introduced to encourage more activity among members. The core idea was to make people generate more content and spend more time at the site, but to me and several others it looked like Mouthshut is deviating from its USP of a serious product review site and trying to become a jack of all and master of none. The current Mouthshut.com looks like a kichdi of Mouthshut (product reviews) + Sulekha (regional classifieds)+flickr(photos)+blogger(diary posts)+ twitter (quick notes, via SMS in this case)+ Orkut (social networking). The focus on quality content got diluted and MS became more of a time-pass adda. Why don't they stay focused on their core competency as there're dedicated sites for other purposes- say orkut, flickr etc, with which MS will never be able to compete?
Mouthshut member base also increased and majority of new users are not serious about product reviews. Many of them just want to have fun uploading copied photos, email forwards or trying to make friends with others, specially female profiles. With phenomenal growth in volume of data created, a new entry, however good it might be, wouldn’t stay on homepage for more than few minutes. This means reduced readership and lesser number of comments. Even for a visitor it is tough to locate some good content worth his/her time. Though lots of readers come through search engines they never bother to comment, because to comment one needs to spend time registering at MS. The idea of trusted circle also started to become a joke, as new members started adding everyone else, irrespective of one's credibility, into their trusted circle, hoping that some of them will reciprocate.
To earn more money by serving more ads they needed to have more pages and more pages can’t be had by reviews alone (one can review one product only once and he/she can’t review a product without properly experiencing it- so the content generated by reviews were not much) and MS management needed a mechanism to make its members spend more time on the site and create more pages. Thus the idea of “Diary posts” were introduced, under which members could write anything under the sun. While most of the members made judicious use of this Diary posts, few started spamming, by uploading email forwards and other junk in a quest to earn more MS points and become star writer soon (Star Writer is Mouthshut’s way of recognizing members who have written lots of (supposed to be of good quality) content, have good fanfare and express unquestionable faith in MS- No real life gain by becoming star writer, except for a star displayed next to your user name)
Mouthshut content team hardly made any attempt to eliminate spam or ban users publishing copy pasted stuff. Because of this, quality posts suffered a setback- it was difficult to identify genuine and quality entries amongst the heap of junk-this was a matter of concern for genuine writers and serious readers. As if diary posts were not enough, MS added several other features- SMS reviews (Spend 3-5 Rs per SMS and get it published in MS), Classifieds (known as MS Local), Photo Albums etc. Features such as bulletins, sending gifts to other members etc were introduced to encourage more activity among members. The core idea was to make people generate more content and spend more time at the site, but to me and several others it looked like Mouthshut is deviating from its USP of a serious product review site and trying to become a jack of all and master of none. The current Mouthshut.com looks like a kichdi of Mouthshut (product reviews) + Sulekha (regional classifieds)+flickr(photos)+blogger(diary posts)+ twitter (quick notes, via SMS in this case)+ Orkut (social networking). The focus on quality content got diluted and MS became more of a time-pass adda. Why don't they stay focused on their core competency as there're dedicated sites for other purposes- say orkut, flickr etc, with which MS will never be able to compete?
Mouthshut member base also increased and majority of new users are not serious about product reviews. Many of them just want to have fun uploading copied photos, email forwards or trying to make friends with others, specially female profiles. With phenomenal growth in volume of data created, a new entry, however good it might be, wouldn’t stay on homepage for more than few minutes. This means reduced readership and lesser number of comments. Even for a visitor it is tough to locate some good content worth his/her time. Though lots of readers come through search engines they never bother to comment, because to comment one needs to spend time registering at MS. The idea of trusted circle also started to become a joke, as new members started adding everyone else, irrespective of one's credibility, into their trusted circle, hoping that some of them will reciprocate.
Loss of Interest in Mouthshut
Due to above developments I started losing interest in Mouthshut. Also my blog was gaining some visibility by then and had a decent readership. So I started focusing more on my blog. Some of my MS entries started contesting directly with my blog posts for higher position in Google search results, due to which I had to downgrade/dilute my MS posts. Mouthshut wanted high quality, exclusive content for free and with their reduced focus on quality and dwindling readership my interest was heading downwards. MS was not comfortable with me leaving my blog URL in the review (Review editor had some limitations in terms of word count, graphics, photos etc and I used to say, "for more details visit here" and give my blog post URL). MS member head Jasmin sent me mails not to leave my blog URL and I promptly mailed back reminding them of the return ticket they still owe me. Since I couldn’t delete my reviews I asked Mouthshut to delete some of my reviews and they promptly disabled my access to my account. My account and my reviews are still retained at MS as they have lots of residual value (attracting search engine traffic). MS neither responds to my mails, nor deletes my content.
Due to above developments I started losing interest in Mouthshut. Also my blog was gaining some visibility by then and had a decent readership. So I started focusing more on my blog. Some of my MS entries started contesting directly with my blog posts for higher position in Google search results, due to which I had to downgrade/dilute my MS posts. Mouthshut wanted high quality, exclusive content for free and with their reduced focus on quality and dwindling readership my interest was heading downwards. MS was not comfortable with me leaving my blog URL in the review (Review editor had some limitations in terms of word count, graphics, photos etc and I used to say, "for more details visit here" and give my blog post URL). MS member head Jasmin sent me mails not to leave my blog URL and I promptly mailed back reminding them of the return ticket they still owe me. Since I couldn’t delete my reviews I asked Mouthshut to delete some of my reviews and they promptly disabled my access to my account. My account and my reviews are still retained at MS as they have lots of residual value (attracting search engine traffic). MS neither responds to my mails, nor deletes my content.
Impact of ban
I don’t have anything to lose. Since I have a reasonably successful blog I don't need to rely on 3rd party websites to publish my contents. If my account was active I would have logged in once a while and contribute something. Else it’s ok. ಕತ್ತೆ ಬಾಲ.But since contents under my identity still exists at the site, without any flag that my account has been disabled, I need to inform everyone that I have no control over my account and won’t be responsible if MS uses their admin rights to modify my contents as per their needs, or someone else misuses it in any other way.
I don’t have anything to lose. Since I have a reasonably successful blog I don't need to rely on 3rd party websites to publish my contents. If my account was active I would have logged in once a while and contribute something. Else it’s ok. ಕತ್ತೆ ಬಾಲ.But since contents under my identity still exists at the site, without any flag that my account has been disabled, I need to inform everyone that I have no control over my account and won’t be responsible if MS uses their admin rights to modify my contents as per their needs, or someone else misuses it in any other way.
I’ve also noticed several good writers gradually exit mouthshut, most probably because of similar reasons. But Mouthshut management may not feel the effect immediately- they’ve a huge user base, loads of content(some of them are very good) and traffic which ensures continued cash inflow through ad revenues. It’s the quality of content and quality of users which they need to focus, along with a fair and transparent operational policies, if they wish to sustain a long term vision.
MS had introduced a corporate blog section, which is almost a flop. Not many companies have cared to open a corporate account and few who’ve cared are not serious about acting on complaints (we only see a generic reply like ‘we’re looking into the matter’).
Allegations against Mouthshut.com
Further, there’re several allegations emerging against Mouthshut.com, which prima facie appear to be true but readers’ discretion solicited. (Some can be verified by close observation of MS, few can't be investigated without cooperation from Mouthshut management and rest need to be concluded based on testimonies of former members) Some of them are listed below:
1 Not curbing fake users
There’re lots of fake Ids in MS which are created for some specific purpose such as promoting a particular brand or demeaning a competitor or such malicious intentions. Created either by MS itself or respective corporate, these IDs are easily identifiable by observing their activities. But MS took no interest in eliminating such users.
2 Not discouraging members posting plagiarized contents, email forwards, third party photographs and other such stuff
3 Not giving any warning or fair chance to members to present their case before terminating their account
4 Moderating reviews and inter-member communications to delete anything remotely unfavorable towards Mouthshut
5 Partnering with certain companies for financial gains and delete negative reviews written against the company
6 Maintaining undue secrecy in their policies and adopting several unfair practices
7 Giving undue preference to certain members who dance to the tunes of MS.
Further, there’re several allegations emerging against Mouthshut.com, which prima facie appear to be true but readers’ discretion solicited. (Some can be verified by close observation of MS, few can't be investigated without cooperation from Mouthshut management and rest need to be concluded based on testimonies of former members) Some of them are listed below:
1 Not curbing fake users
There’re lots of fake Ids in MS which are created for some specific purpose such as promoting a particular brand or demeaning a competitor or such malicious intentions. Created either by MS itself or respective corporate, these IDs are easily identifiable by observing their activities. But MS took no interest in eliminating such users.
2 Not discouraging members posting plagiarized contents, email forwards, third party photographs and other such stuff
3 Not giving any warning or fair chance to members to present their case before terminating their account
4 Moderating reviews and inter-member communications to delete anything remotely unfavorable towards Mouthshut
5 Partnering with certain companies for financial gains and delete negative reviews written against the company
6 Maintaining undue secrecy in their policies and adopting several unfair practices
7 Giving undue preference to certain members who dance to the tunes of MS.
For the interested, below are some links which detail various allegations against Mouthshut:
1. http://mouthshut-com-fraud-cheat.blogspot.com/2008/09/my-bad-experiences-with-mouthshut.html
This blog, among other allegations, claims that Mouthshut CEO Mr. Faisal I Farooqui who studied at the prestigious St. Stanislaus school in Bandra, Mumbai, cheated his institute by registering the domain meant for school in his personal name and refusing to transfer the same to school administration. This is something one should be able to verify without much efforts.
2. http://www.petitiononline.com/banms201/petition.html
(It is a 5 year old petition and has managed to secure just about 150 signatures so far)
3. http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/internet-sites/mouthshut-com/333593/
Seems Mouthshut launched an international version promising to pay users for their reviews and then cheating them by not paying
Another interesting reading:
http://www.Mouthshut.com/diary/eecjqttq/My-attempts-to-reach-Google-India
Mouthshut CEO explains his attempt to reach Google India. Google doesn’t deal directly with general public and is not bound to keep its staff accessible to public. But while bloggers like Amit Agarwal are able to get Google sponsor his events with just one tweet, CEO of a popular site (and probably a premium adsense publisher) doesn’t have a single contact in Google- How pathetic. 9 months since that post its not clear if he is still able to contact anyone in Google or what deal he cracked with major corporates including Yahoo!
1. http://mouthshut-com-fraud-cheat.blogspot.com/2008/09/my-bad-experiences-with-mouthshut.html
This blog, among other allegations, claims that Mouthshut CEO Mr. Faisal I Farooqui who studied at the prestigious St. Stanislaus school in Bandra, Mumbai, cheated his institute by registering the domain meant for school in his personal name and refusing to transfer the same to school administration. This is something one should be able to verify without much efforts.
2. http://www.petitiononline.com/banms201/petition.html
(It is a 5 year old petition and has managed to secure just about 150 signatures so far)
3. http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/internet-sites/mouthshut-com/333593/
Seems Mouthshut launched an international version promising to pay users for their reviews and then cheating them by not paying
Another interesting reading:
http://www.Mouthshut.com/diary/eecjqttq/My-attempts-to-reach-Google-India
Mouthshut CEO explains his attempt to reach Google India. Google doesn’t deal directly with general public and is not bound to keep its staff accessible to public. But while bloggers like Amit Agarwal are able to get Google sponsor his events with just one tweet, CEO of a popular site (and probably a premium adsense publisher) doesn’t have a single contact in Google- How pathetic. 9 months since that post its not clear if he is still able to contact anyone in Google or what deal he cracked with major corporates including Yahoo!
Conclusion
There’re several websites on the net which survive purely because we, the users chose to contribute contents to them, for free. Most of them expect us to spend our time and effort writing for, engaging other users and promoting their site, in exchange for no tangible returns. Few sites like Sulekha give full ownership of contents to users while others declare that they own whatever stuff added to their site (Even facebook tried this recently and resulted in awareness of privacy concerns). While it’s good to have well defined guidelines and policies in place to enforce discipline, expecting absolute loyalty and cultism is not fair. Though well established sites give better readership than a newly launched blog, serious writers should work on building their own identity via blogs or otherwise and must evaluate content ownership issues and privacy policies before dealing with websites like Mouthshut.com
There’re several websites on the net which survive purely because we, the users chose to contribute contents to them, for free. Most of them expect us to spend our time and effort writing for, engaging other users and promoting their site, in exchange for no tangible returns. Few sites like Sulekha give full ownership of contents to users while others declare that they own whatever stuff added to their site (Even facebook tried this recently and resulted in awareness of privacy concerns). While it’s good to have well defined guidelines and policies in place to enforce discipline, expecting absolute loyalty and cultism is not fair. Though well established sites give better readership than a newly launched blog, serious writers should work on building their own identity via blogs or otherwise and must evaluate content ownership issues and privacy policies before dealing with websites like Mouthshut.com
Similar posts: SEO: Writing for humans vs writing for search engines * My journalism experiences * Excessive blogging syndrome & compulsive writing disorder * Nishindra Verma on future of print media * TOI lifts my photo (and publishes clarification later) *
Nov 2009 Update: One year later, MS has still retained my profile and reviews, doesn't seem to have changed its ways and appears to have lost a level in Google pagerank (down from 6 to 5)
Nov 2009 Update: One year later, MS has still retained my profile and reviews, doesn't seem to have changed its ways and appears to have lost a level in Google pagerank (down from 6 to 5)
27 comments:
even i've noticed couple of years back that mouthshut has been sending a few spam mails (obviously to improve readership, participation of members). had not been following it since then
there are a lot of sites surviving on content by others (some legitimate and some of them copied) and content seems to be the king :)
Yes. Some sites survive solely by republishing contents derived from RSS feeds
Thanks
my 2 cents..
I got to know you through MouthShut.. even I was pretty active on that site for a while, I gave up my interest because of most of the reasons you have mentioned. Though I use adblock, I still hate myself going to their site.
Monetization is required to run a company on the web world, but making ads with minimal content overlapped between ads make it a bad place.
If they can't live upto their promise of airticket, why the hell they advertise such misleading promos? It is a shame on them that they are loosing genuine contributors like you and me. Evidence for that is their spam mails promoting people to visit their site. As long as they don't take care of user experience, they will never excell in what ever they do.
Thanks for sharing you story Shrinidhi.
Hi :-)
A very well written article and I so much agree with you. Having seen that comment from CEO's fake ID was very shocking for me. For reasons similiar to yours I had quit the site and whenever I visit it even now I feel disgusted.
Disgusted with the fact that how things can go bad from worst sadly there still are people who believe that the site is "the best". For me MS is niether here nor there...
It is pure garbage for me....
Well, I was never a user of MS...only used to visit it for the latest movie reviews...and once for the review of Royal Enfield - TBird...I started marveling the site when one of the Bloggers at our Company's Corporate blog started to boast about his readership at MS.
Thanks to you, now I know about the underlying facts of the site.
The issues mentioned would annoy any user...and serious contributor!!
Sites like MouthShut which abuse user trust and participation are aplenty on the internet.
That's why I decided NEVER to contribute a single word to a third-party site without some form of monetary remuneration.
It's sickening that sites like MS use your content to get money and then ban your account for ridiculous reasons.
Too big a post. Even I'm a member of MouthShut.com, dunno whether my account is active or not. I joined coz you sent me an invitation.
The only review I wrote was on my mobile (which I still use). After that I got periodical mails from Ms. Jasmine Ahuja, which I could make time to care of.
I didnt knew much about the internal dealings of MS, Thanks for bringing it to the notice. I dunno. I've forgotten my password too. Hopefully I might not log in again to that site. =)
Mohan,
I didn't knew that you know me via Mouthshut...
Yes, the ad quantity on MS is just too much. They induce unnecessary space between paragraphs to lengthen the page so that more ads can be accommodated-makes reading difficult.
Smita (Chint25 on MS)
Nice to hear from you. You were doing very well at MS. Didn't knew that you also have quit MS. Will check your blog.
ThePack,
Thanks
Hari,
Appreciate your stand.
Sandesh,
You were one of the 3 people I invited to MS long long back during good old days of MS. I regret that now, but luckily all those I invited didn't waste much of their time at MS. After that never invited anyone.
Thanks everyone for the support.
Hi Shrinidhi
A very good post about how one should not ruin their user community ... I am sure there are lessons there for all of us
I think you can always send them a DMCA takedown request for your content as you don't want it there anymore (unless their TOC says something like they own it)
Prateek Dayal
http://www.prateekdayal.net/blogPS: Please let people comment with their blog link and not just google id/openid .
Prateek,
I've enabled all available commenting options, including anonymous.
No, MS user agreement clearly says they get complete, irrevocable, royalty free right to all the content posted there.
Thanks
It is ages that I have quit that place. I decided that no TP is worth if it gives you unnecessary tension and specially with the crap the place was churning it was better to move out...
That was a good post. I was coolwater on MS and enjoyed my early stint there.
They surely realised that the 'social' part of their members was generating more traffic, and added more elements to suit themselves.
It didnt suit me much later for several reasons, the major one being that it was firewalled in my office. So gradually I dropped out of it.
They should have more transparency, or become less intrusive like the other social networking sites like Orkut or Facebook.
Of course, Lying about gifts is a crime. Either dont have a gift scheme, or honor the ones that are offered.
Smita
Ok. You did the right thing. Thanks for following.
Avdi
Good to see you here (and several other former MS members)
Earlier Mouthshut was accessible in many companies that'd banned other sites like Orkut. Currently most of the companies have blocked MS too, most probably because they feel visiting Mouthshut can't be productive in any sense.
They could have started a separate social networking site, if they wanted to, keeping MS pure.
meenakshi,
Its ok. thanks.
This is so shocking! I used MS to vent my anger on some services, but didn't ever think such things happen. Thanks for the post.
Rekha,
well,its unfortunate-that's all I can say...
I am a member of Mouthshut since 2002. Today I said goodbye and came out of of MS (but keeping my membership). MS is not for descent people. My MS ID:livehappy
Ben, anything bad happened with you? Or you just realized overall it is not good?
Please share your experiences
Overall..it is not worth wasting our time with mouthshut!
Ok. Why not start a blog of your own?
I have to think over it..I am 65...and going to USA for 6 months..as usual like last year
I am in many technical blogs and news letters
OK Sir,
Thanks for visiting. All the best and take care.
Well.. I think Mouthshut needs these lessons.. I was thr on Mouthshut ID: Seera and i know hw fraud they r.. long story sometime will write a blog about it :)
I am the latest who said good bye to MS, but being pressurised by some close friends to stay back. Don't know what I will due in coming days. But one thing is sure, that Faisal needs to learn a lesson and time has come.
I agree with your post line by line.
Hello Mr Srinidhi,
About mouthshut: it will be crystal-clear if you take a look at the religious-festival-related logos on the site.
Hindu: 3
Muslim: 2
Other: 0
The site obviously has an agenda; the CEO's name is "Faizal." That by itself may not mean much, but it raises flags of suspicion in my head.
Keep up the good work!
I never looked at the logos from religious perspective... Not sure what is the conclusion you're trying to make... let us see what logo they display for Chrismas? It could also be because Hindus and Muslims have relatively more number of festivals and or Mouthshut team is not creative enough to create logos for Christian/other religious celebrations?
I've no idea and not interested either
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