Bonanzle Spamming Itself - Bad Idea!

Bonanzle has made a change to the "people page" of their site. They have removed the middle section where it automatically showed members who were currently online and you could look up other members. They replaced it with their members current promo feeds to Twitter and Facebook.

Click the graphic to enlarge it.We have to ask WHY?

Many people used the old page and it was helpful to both buyers and sellers. We used it several times a day, most every day and so did many others.

The way they have set this up, it causes members to spam themselves. It is such a silly idea that it is hard to believe that this is really happening. After all, the site already has a promotion forum right at the top of this same page.

What is really funny is that the promos on the site had gotten so bad that the site administrators put a limit on how many promos a seller could post - 5 in a 3 day period. Now they add this section which allows members unlimited promos.

Some members have noted their concern about their Facebook and Twitter pages being polluted with other Bonanzle members spam and subjecting their families and friends to the same. These members used the Facebook connect link in the top right hand corner of the Bonanzle peopel page which is new and was first offered this morning. We suggest that no one use this link to avoid this issue. Also, these members say that when they log out of Bonanzle, they are automatically logged out of Twitter and Facebook. We don't know much about this as we decided not to participate in the link.

Most people do not like spam. Many people avoid Twitter and Facebook due to the recurring viruses and trojans and the spam. Now, Bonanzle members have it staring them in the face each and every time they go to the people page. Of course, then they get the same, identical spam on their social networking sites.

If spam is truly a useful marketing strategy, then this new section will also give spammers an unfair advantage over other Bonanzle members. Many people do not have time or want to join the social networking sites so this new section puts spammers way ahead of them as far as visibility. It doesn't seem right or fair to not treat all Bonanzle members equally and this new section does not promote member equality. Everyone should have a fair shake at site visibility without having to join other sites to do so.

With all of the things that have needed to be fixed since Bonanzle's beginning and the feature requests for things members have voted on, one would think that the administrators would have better things to do than to send the offsite spam back to their site, much less right in the middle of one of the sites most heavily visited pages.

We understand fully how social networking can help build a business but we seriously question just how much social networking is necessary to do so. The other question is, is Bonanzle a serious selling venue or just a house of chit chat, games and spam?

From what we see, the only thing that makes sense in all of this is that Bonanzle is likely being paid for giving up such a valuable piece of real estate on their site. They are also likely being paid if someone joins Twitter or Facebook through the new links on the site or the new section. There are no other logical reasons for such a ridiculous site change.

As far as we are concerned, this was a very bad move by Bonanzle and it does not reflect well on the site. It has also caused us to put another entry in the cons section of our list of things to consider in continuing our Bonanzle membership.

At the time of this writing, there is a forum thread on this topic that is 11 pages long. Most of the members do not like the new change. We have been patiently waiting for an official site post on the subject but there has been none in just under 7 hours since the thread was created. Click here to read the thread.

UPDATE:
Bonanzle co-founder, Mark Dorsey just responded, a little less than 8 hours since the thread began, on page 13. Mark writes:

"Did you know that Facebook accounts for more than twice the amount of traffic than Google on some major player sites?

With the recent changes at Google we realized that it is best to not put our eggs all in one basket. I would encourage you all to learn about Facebook and how you can utilize this powerful tool to your advantage. This is a very good thing."

Click here to go to that page.

So there you have it, or maybe you don't. It sort of sounds like Bonanzle administration is happy with this change. As for what they think of what their members have to say or if they are even taking it into consideration, well... we will leave that up to your interpretation.
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** Special Note:
Sellers should know that they can sell their items on the Facebook Marketplace. In doing so, they are promoting their own brand and products and not just a venue. With this option available through Facebook, we find even more questions about the necessity of the change to the Bonanzle people page. Perhaps they are banking on people not investigating Facebook further to find out they can sell directly there and without Bonanzle? It seems to us that Bonanzle is not needed if a seller intends to use Facebook frequently since they already offer a marketplace. We don't know many that would spend their time promoting on Facebook for a venue that they have to pay any kind of fee to when they can promote themselves and their products and do the selling for free on the Facebook Marketplace.
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UPDATE:
Bonanzle founder, Bill Harding has responded to the thread on page 17, about 10 hours after the thread began. Here is what he had to say:

"Hey all,

As is generally the case with Bonanzle changes, we understand it won’t be possible to make everybody happy. But we try.

In regards to regaining the link to see who’s online, that’s definitely something we can & will do. I plan to re-add that to the People page for tomorrow (just got to figure out where). In the meantime, there is a link from the homepage to see “Who’s online.”

As far as whether the list of people is more relevant than the most recent social commentary (and/or whether its “spam”), I suppose that’s always going to be debatable. The way we see it, the list of online users was not adding value in that it was limited (you could only see a very small number of the overall people online) and it duplicated functionality already available on the users page. Therefore, this didn’t seem like the most advantageous use of real estate on the People page.

If you don’t care what people have been Facebooking and Tweeting about, there is no reason for you to scroll down the page and read about it. The luxury of having them lower on the page is that you’ll only encounter them if you scroll down (or look down) to them. That said, we’ll probably still make refinements about what shows up in the list of recent FB & Twitter posts. I think that one helpful change could be to only show each user once in the list, just showing their most recent post/tweet, in cases where one person posts multiple times.

In the future, perhaps we can allow users to customize the look of the People page, such that you can see the panels that are most interesting to you. But that adds complexity in itself, so that might be a bit further down the road.

Also, if you hadn’t noticed, you’re free to hide the Facebook link in the header by clicking on it and choosing “don’t show me this again.”

Hope this helps clear up some of the confusion.
Bill"

Click here to go to that page.
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We have our own feelings about Bills official post but we will leave you to decide what he is saying beyond - if you don't like the change, don't look at it. What is easy to see, Bonanzle - the site and administration, is happy and it doesn't appear that this big mistake will be rectified soon, if ever.

Someone in the thread said that Bonanzle is a fast moving train. Well, that may be but what adverse effects will they find on this fast track or what is at the end of the tracks because of these kinds of decisions? People who are turned off by all of this will likely not sign up for the site and those that are already members will likely leave. And that member who talked about the train said to get on the train or get left at the station - at least those at the station will have a business plan (and know what it is in advance, not traveling blindly) and are likely not headed for a train wreck (brick wall) or practice unfairness (to get equal exposure on the Bonanzle site, sellers have to join outside social sites and spend hours using them).

Oh, don't forget the old agruement about whether or not buyers come to the people page. When memebers worry about certain things being seen by potential buyers or new sellers, the site always says that buyers rarely visit the page. So then what in the world is the purpose of placing the Twitter and Facebook promotions of Bonanzle items on this heavily visited page? Sellers already see the other promotions and visit each other. They see these promos on their social networking sites. Just what does the site think this is going to do as far as helping sellers complete more sales if the buyers rarely visit this page? It would be nice if they would explain just what the usefulness of the new section is.

Hey, whatever happened to the business of selling?! Sellers need buyers, not self-delivered spam!

We are very disappointed about this change. The time we have spent to set up our Bonanzle booth and all of the promoting we have done has probably been a waste. The reason being, if the site continues in this direction, we will not stay. We have plans and visions for our online selling while at the same time, we expect to be treated fairly. None of these plans or visions ever included what is going on today. We have time left on our paid membership so we will be there until it runs out. That should be enough time for Bonanzle to correct some missteps and an assortment of other unresolved site issues.
If not, adios.