12 Mar CherryTap in the news Over the last few days CherryTap (CT to the users) has gotten a mention in the Washington Post and on TechShout. The articles are nearly identical. Seems that CT now has a story about how it got started. Wonder if itfs true or something they made up for the press release? Also, if therefs no advertising on the site (as stated in both articles) then whatfs the CherryBank and all the little links all over the place that lead to other sites? Oh, and then why is there a section in the TOS that says we canft cover up the banner ads? I just wonder if the users realize that all the pictures that they put in the CT profiles are being shown on Cherry Photos along with a link to email it to others. Considering how fussy some of them get when someone eripsf their photos on CT, Ifd hate to be nearby when they see this that their photos are being displayed on another site without their permission. Especially since the currently posted TOS says nothing about granting permission to show images on other sites. The applicable section reads: c. By posting any Content to the public areas of the Website, you hereby grant to CherryTAP.com the non-exclusive, fully paid, worldwide license to use, publicly perform and display such Content on the Website. Hmmc no mention of Cherry Photo there. Or Cherry Stash for that matter. Hey Mike, are either of these spin offs suppose to stand on their own or are they just there to draw in more people into CherryTap? I thought since they were issuing press releases Social Concepts might finally be out of the, so called, stealth mode. But a quick look at their site and I see theyfre still claiming theyfre not. Ifm beginning to think their definition of stealth and mine are two different things. Anyway, as much as I hate to, I still have to admit that CherryTap is the best social networking site Ifve found. If you have a new one that youfd like me to try let me know, please. But so far Ifve tried all the usual places, MySpace, Tribe.net, Tag, Hi5, Friendster, Christian Connect, and some more that I canft remember. Out of all of those, Tribe.net is the best. If they just had the virtual gifts that you could buy with virtual points earned from surfing the site, Ifd quit CherryTap in a heartbeat. Add to: This entry was posted on Monday, March 12th, 2007 at 9:13 pm and is filed under Internet Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. 7 Responses to gCherryTap in the newsh 1Tammy Miller Says: I am a member of this site, as well as a site bouncer. Everyone that signs in to the site, as well as every member on the site, has complete access to our Terms of Service where your above quote is pulled from. As with anything else, even given the option to view, read and understand the TOS and any related items, few members actually do read them in their entirety. As a member of ANY online community, your profile is open to the public. Any pictures that you post, anything in your stashes along with your blogs and profiles are public property unless properly copyrighted. Public areas are all areas accessible by the public. That includes the aforementioned areas. Questions by the general membership can and are directed to onsite bouncers as well as administration. ie Mike, Ryan etc. Questions on site are answered in a variety of ways including in the support lounge. As for the advertisements on site, as with anything, you must generate money in order to keep the site running. At least there are no pop-ups. You can either click on the links, or not. Yes..I love the site. The best on line community I have come across. Any spin off, would be just thatc.a spin off. Thanks for making CherryTAP your site of choice. :=) April 6th, 2007 at 9:21 pm 2jweiss Says: Hey Tammy, thanks for commenting. I agree that most people donft read the TOS. Thatfs true with most any site. But the point I was making was that when people upload photos to CT they are only giving CT permission to display those photos on CT, according to CTfs own TOS. They are not giving permission for those to be displayed on the other two sites. As for it all being open to the public, thatfs a given. But as a bouncer Ifm sure youfve heard some of the people complaining that someone erippedf an image out of their image gallery. While this is an emotional issue rather than a legal issue, itfs still an issue none the less and those same people will get emotionally charged when/if they discover that their images are being listed on a new site without their permission. At the very least, Social Concepts needs to have the CT TOS updated to include the new sites so that when people agree to it theyfre giving permission for their items to be displayed on those sites. As one who owns several sites, I totally understand the need to earn money from them. The only reason I brought up the ads was because the articles quoted in my original post stated CherryTAP, which does not incorporate any form of advertising on its Website So I wanted to point out that discrepancy between what the articles said and what was true. As for spin offs, inspiration strikes and people build. Just because something could be seen as a spin off does not make it inferior. Many would say that CherryTap is just a spin off of MySpace or Friendster, and I would agree. But you and I both feel that CT is the best thatfs currently out there. But I donft expect it to stay that way. Over the last several months most of the changes made have been, IMHO, for the worse. And changes that need to be made to improve it have been avoided. This will lead to someone with a new way on how to execute the same idea coming along and taking over, in time. April 7th, 2007 at 9:53 am 3Zorro Says: Wow!!!!! Ifm quitting right this instant. No kidding. Pics are being pulled, profile is going blank. More people need to know whatfs going on. editorfs comment: Since sarcasm doesnft convey well in text, I wanted to point out that I donft think Zorro really cares about this topic. April 7th, 2007 at 12:50 pm 4Scott Says: Hey Mr Weiss, Thanks for a great piece of information. I agree with you and Tammy about a couple thingsc and I agree with you wholeheartedly about the rest. Let me ramble a little, if I may: CT is a great site and one of the best community sites like it on the Web right now. The site is dynamic, and the community is strong and active. Generally speaking, they participate regularly and we self-police as much as possible. The Bouncers do a great job of policing the rest and keeping the site clean and running smooth. As with all things, there are problems here and there, but in general between the users and the Bouncers things work great. The CONCEPT of a series of gCherryh community sites that feed each other data is a great one. Having the CherryTAP community site feed images to CherryPhotos and data to CherryStash, and then having those feed users back to the main community is a great idea. What bothers me is that itfs not MENTIONED anywhere. No-one on CT knows that wefre doing research for the daughter sites. Youfre very right about people being upset about the grippedh images, and they will indeed be more upset when they find CT itself has ripped their own images and re-used them. Itfs just plain sneaky, in simple terms. If the intent is to compete with Hot or Not and iMeem (etc), then I wish them luck! But if the intent is to build a network of sites like that, that should be clearly stated! Now, what you said about the TOS is dead on. We gave rights for the images / stashes / intellectual property to be used by Social Concepts on the CherryTAP website only. Therefs no mention in the TOS about using our intellectual property as a datamine to feed all Social Conceptfs daughter sites (however there may be, I havenft looked through Internic for other gCherryh related sites). Having said all that, I went and reposted your blog as a CherryTAP bulletin. I havenft been on the site very long, Ifve only got a couple hundred friends so not a real wide circle of distribution. I do, however, have several of the gtop cherriesh on that list, people that could repost that to 10fs of 1000fs of people. I figured Ifd get the word out and let people make their own decisions. Unfortunately, the bulletin I posted was almost immediately deleted, and my account was locked out. I can no longer access the account at all, and the support team (top level, not the Bouncers) are telling me itfs gprobably a browser bugh although Ifve tested it sufficiently to know itfs specific to my account. All very interesting, since nothing in that bulletin is against anything in the TOS. Oh, and I gstickiedh the bulletin to make sure it didnft scroll offc and that cost me $5. Ifm going to want that refunded, since I paid for 24 hours of display time and was given about 10 minutesc Anyway, thanks again for the information! I wouldnft have known any of that, and I find it most interesting. I though you might like to know how the CT top level folks deal with people that re-post that information on their site. Have a good one, and keep up the great site! April 9th, 2007 at 10:59 am 5Suzy Says: my last account of this subject i seen someone posted in a bullentin that scrapper said gonlyhphotos from your default album would be showed on cherryphotos. so to make sure i am removing all my photos from default into private albums viewed by friends only that way they can not gstealh them and place on sister site editorfs comment: Thatfs interesting information Suzy. Any CT higher ups care to confirm this? April 9th, 2007 at 1:55 pm 6Jeremy Crow Says: Well I want to add a few of my observtions that I had posted on my follow up to this article {which I canft thank you enough for because it plugged quite a few holes on other erroneous issues} c Upon doing research of my own into the whole CherryPhotos, I was able to find out that it was a total clone of the CherryTAP site with a few differences. First and most important as it has added to a ton of drama as of late was the fact that when you went to the images like you were doing gIfm Boredh on the CherryTAP site itself most of the images were already rated 1fs or 10fs c Mostly 1fs and if you actually changed it to a 10 it went back to gYou rated this photo a 1 when you came back to it. There is no clear definition of whether those rates go into the CherryTAP database, but everyone is ready to kill each other over all of the 1fs that are being applied to primary pictures these days so it is curious. There is also the fact that it is the same people over and over again that are in thier rotations either to grateh or to gsign up underh at the end of the gpractice ratingh and they ARE the top promoters in CherryTAP itself c This leads me to beleive that the reason Scott up there was locked out was to keep these gflawsh {because I still beleive they are flaws and not actual fraudulent activities} from being discovered, and THAT is what I have a problem with c I could care less if I get rated a 10 or a 1 but I am sick of people accusing me of rating them a 1 because of all of the invisible people rating 1s Simple honesty would stop the drama, and they donft c Thanks for this I really appreciate it and have bookmarked your page c great writing c JC April 9th, 2007 at 5:48 pm (I FOUND THIS ON A SITE CALLED..WEISSBLOG.COM, OBBIOUSLY THOSE SITES HAVE BEEN UP A LOT LONGER THAN ANYONE THOUGHT.. NOTICE THIS BLOG WAS POSTED MARCH 12TH.. I THINK WE SHOULD HAVE BEEN INFORMED BEFORE THEY ALLOWED OUR PICTURES AND EVERYTHING ELSE WAS USED, THANKS.. CASSIE)