What is Upscoop?
Upscoop is a service that finds friends and acquaintances of yours that might be in various social networks on the Web, such as MySpace, Friendster, LinkedIn, etc., based on their unique email address.
While you might already know where some of your friends might hang out on the Web, there's probably a few of your contacts that you don't have this information for, and it could come in handy.
How does Upscoop work?
Upscoop works very simply. You hand over your email usernames and passwords for your Hotmail, Gmail, AOL, or Yahoo account...what's that? Hand over your email passwords and usernames? Yep, I thought that sounded fishy too; however, Upscoop's privacy policy clearly states that they do not hang onto this info, they won't spam you, and they won't sell your info. This is a bit of an iffy call for me; I would say that if you're really wanting to get the information that Upscoop promises to give out, the risk is relatively small.Back to how Upscoop works: Once you have handed over the keys to your email kingdom, so to speak, Upscoop grabs your contact lists and attempts to locate these email addresses at various social networking sites on the Web. Be prepared to wait. And wait. And wait some more - this process is not quick, but is worth the wait if you really want this information.
Upscoop Cons
I think Upscoop could use some improvements:- Speed up the retrieval process - it's wayyyy too long.
- Have a universal login for all your email addresses, rather than one service at a time. I don't know how you'd go about doing this, but if they could accomplish it, that would be slick.
- Create an anonymizer: This in my opinion should have been included from the very beginning. Instead of asking people to hand over secure information, Upscoop would've done better to supply a "throwaway" email address that people could use to re-route their actual email addy's through. This throwaway email address could have a shelf life of say 24 hours or so - that would be more secure (or at least have the appearance of more secure) than what they've got going on now.
- Have a broader range of services: Once you've got your contacts properly stalked, ahem, located, what's the next step? You've pretty much worn out what Upscoop has to offer at that point. I think that they would do well to create more services on top of the lost and found angle in order to keep folks coming.
Why should I use Upscoop - Pros
- It's an easy way to find people: It's a simple way to find people that you actually might WANT to find.
- Upscoop potentially can create more opportunities: Say there's someone you would really like to get to know, but you don't have much common ground. Try Upscoop to see if you both are on LinkedIn, or MySpace, or Friendster - it's possible that you have more in common than you might think.
