An open letter to Jessica Peter

May 6, 2010

Update: A few days after this post was published, Jessica Peter was removed from Facebook. I also updated this post to omit the individual company names.

Dear Jessica-

I noticed you have 887 friends on Facebook and that we have 117 friends in common. I probably accepted your friendship for that very reason because I know we’ve never met face-to-face.

I noticed you’re 24 years old and graduated from a high school with the same name as my high school in ’00. That would have made you 14 years old. Congrats on being a whiz kid. I noticed we also graduated from the same college in 2006 (congrats again for being a whiz kid).

Your bio looked real familiar to me:

…Now work virtually from my home office. I blog professionally about the social web, research and write about learning technologies, present, teach, and (sometimes) attend graduate school.

(Oh snap! It’s mine. Verbatim. From Facebook.) I’m flattered you’d find it good enough to lift but please get your own life. Mine’s not incredibly exciting and with your beautiful photo (you could be a stock photo!), I’m sure your life is rich in experiences.

I noticed you’re a Sales Manager at [name omitted] eLearning Solution (note: you’re missing the ‘s’, it’s actually [name omitted] eLearning Solutions). This would have been another reason I may have accepted your friend request.

Wow! I just noticed you gain about 25 friends a day ( I read that’s the max allowed on Facebook).

Anyway, I wanted to contact you so went to your contact information:

  • [Name omitted] eLearning Solutions (administrator for Facebook group.)
  • A total of six medical transcription companies
  • A “Green” Google custom search engine
  • Speech recognition training for lawyers

(You must be moonlighting as a transcriptionist. Those college loans can be a bitch, I know.)

I noticed that you do little more on your profile than post marketing messages, “friend” people and accept birthday wishes . Happy 23rd! Because you don’t respond to things like “Thanks for connecting. Delighted to see so many mutual friends” (from a mutual friend), I’m afraid I’ll have to remove you from my friends. I’m here for conversations not marketing messages.

I noticed your Twitter handle no longer exists. That saves me the time of removing you from my followers as well.

I noticed today you posted something about medical transcription and that’s totally fine but again, I’m not interested in marketing messages and don’t have a need for transcription services.

Thanks though, for that post because that’s what made me check out your profile.

I’ve sent you a message about the bio thing and asked the company to contact me. Nothing yet. Anxiously awaiting to hear from you.

Best of luck in your future endeavors-

Janet

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  • http://twitter.com/christensenbd Brett Christensen

    Janet – Thanks for educating me on this. I have one friend less in my list!

  • Don Bolen

    Janet – thanks for sharing your experience. We've seen individuals within our professional association LinkedIn Group using dubious “professional” connections to promote events, careers. I'm conflicted over the best means of managing – wait for a complaint or actively monitor and expel. Groups provide a means of engagement about chapter activities, extend our reach and are currently no cost. Be interested in your perspective on managing these marketing malingers.

  • http://pursuingperformanceblog.blogspot.com/ Guy W Wallace

    Ditto to what Brett wrote.

  • http://janetclarey.com/ jclarey

    Don –
    The secondary purpose (the first is joining a professional community) of LinkedIn groups (from their website) says…

    “LinkedIn Groups allows group organizations to extend their brand’s reach and strengthen the brand with existing users by providing additional value through LinkedIn’s features.”

    I guess it's that “additional value” that becomes the issue. It's subjective. Valuable information for me is not necessarily valuable for you.

    I try to take a quick look at the new requests to join and if they don't have anything to do with the learning/elearning fields, I'll go to their profile. If they have few connections and limited information, I'll refuse them.

    I've had to delete posts that were pure marketing (I see them through email updates) and send people a friendly reminder of the purpose of the group. I think it's important to have guidelines (purpose) associated with a social network you are managing – what you can and can not do and what will happen if you violate a rule.

    We all have a money path so a certain amount of marketing is tolerated in a community if the person marketing adds value in other ways. I'll send reminders of webinars, workshops, and publications but hope I add enough value and provide enough help to members of my communities so they don't think I'm just pushing products and services.

    I think we have to keep out the obvious shills. For the rest of us, guidelines and enforcement.

    One more thought…LinkedIn does have subgroups so you could have “events” and just have those posts located there leaving the main discussion area for issues related to the group.

  • http://digitaldialogues.blogs.com/ AnneBB

    eeewww – kind of like a stalker Janet – kind of flattering, yet also spooky!
    It's not quite identity theft, but she (or he – who knows) has clearly identifed you as an influencer… but – presenting herself as you – I mean why bother? (said with the greatest respect to you!).
    The whole point about social networks, the key value propositions are trust, authenticity and openness…
    Maybe we should run a session on this!
    Look forward to seeing the updates – if there are any?!!
    ABB ;-)

  • Montse Anderson

    I'm sure this happens far more frequently than we realize especially with so much transparency out there. Thank goodness you caught it!

    Thank you for sharing!

  • simbeckhampson

    Top investigative work Janet, on to it now! Some people… makes you wonder eh!

  • http://karynromeis.blogspot.com Karyn Romeis

    Thanks for the heads up, Janet. I fell for that one, too. I have reported 'her' to the FB powers that be. Not sure if anything will come of it, though.

  • lynnwernham

    Thanks for this Janet. How did you discover this? active clearout or chance?

  • http://janetclarey.com/ jclarey

    Just by chance. First, I noticed some consecutive marketing messages. Then, I noticed one about something totally unrelated to what I do. Also, she was too pretty (stock photo pretty). I don't know people in elearning that look like that and/or are in their 20s so she stuck out to me. Whoever set up the shill profile should have picked a stock photo of a 45- year old that fits in with the community. Of course having a beautiful 20ish profile would mean you pick up more friends (my guess).

  • http://janetclarey.com/ jclarey

    Thanks!

  • http://janetclarey.com/ jclarey

    Now that you mention it, it is kind of stalker-ish for exactly that reason…why bother? And yes, a session on the key value propositions would be great. I'm sure there are plenty of stories to illustrate trust, authenticity and openness.

  • Don Bolen

    Thanks.

  • gshunter

    The deal on Jessica Peter is spooky. She also 'friended' me and I also accepted although I wasn't really sure who she was. And if I was suckered by that flashy photo I am so lame. And again – she has like 50 of the same friends I do. Is she real? Is she from the matrix? What algorithm created her? Anyway – I enjoyed your post on the dealio. Thanks

  • monmmontana

    I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

    Montana

    http://pianotutorial.net

  • Tom

    Janet – I am not find jessica's twitter and facebook account.

  • http://janetclarey.com/ jclarey

    That is because she's gone! Yay!

  • http://iliveisl.com Ener Hax

    well gee whiz, who woulda thunk anyone would game a social networking site? the gall (the Gaulle?) =p

    oh well, they (facebookfail) booted me out saying i was not real – pretty suckie of them. but i am not real so i guess i had it coming (especially since my profile said i was fake! doh! =D

    lessons learned? some people take advantage of social networking, some sell stuff you don't need (like teeth whitening systems via twitter, most effective after doing some big dollar acai berry stuff, also via twitter)

    anyway, back to my fakey world (btw, that twitter value thing says i am worth $6800! woohoo, not bad for a fake person)

    but i am the real fake person, not a copy of someone with a fake name – big diff there

    anyway, good luck with all your endeavors =)

  • http://twitter.com/JessicaPeter1 Jessica Peter

    Ah! Scary. I just googled myself and found this. Just what I need, a creepy stalker marketer with the same name as me. (PS: I swear this wasn't me! Haha.)

  • Rupa
  • http://www.medicaltranscriptiontraining.in/ Medical Transcription Training

    Very nice post. Helped me a lot. thanks

  • JP

    This is really unfortunate. Googling my name brings your article up first. Perhaps you could make your title a little more generic?

  • http://janetclarey.com/ jclarey

    What’s your name? Your email doesn’t correspond with the title of this post, although your initials do.

  • Rupa

    I am a little late …. but then just wanted to inform that the profile pic of this Jessica Peter is that of an Indian actress. Check: http://allfeatures.blogspot.com/2010/04/samantha-ruth-prabhu-profile.html

    This shows how people misuse publicly available pics!

  • http://twitter.com/iliveisl Ener Hax

    yep, what is identity? that’s why i stay fake online – there is nothing real about Ener Hax and that does not stop my uber high blog rating (was in top 1.72% of Alexa last week) or from having 27k followers

    as long as you are genuine and add true value to other’s lives, then it does not matter who you really are
    *tries to do a full lotus, but friggin’ knees won’t cooperate*  =)

    namas te

  • Jessica Peter

    I’m going to ditto the other “real” Jessica Peter who has replied to this post. Every time a potential employer googles me they’re going to find this and wonder if I’m a creepy Facebook stalker? Perhaps you could amend the title?

  • http://janetclarey.com/ jclarey

    This is a 18+ month old story about the problem of stolen identity and you want me to make the name anonymous so someone searching this very common name won’t think it’s you? I love irony. Have you requested clarification of the use of “your” name on the 25,899 sites out there?

  • http://twitter.com/iliveisl Ener Hax

    well, my real name is actually Jessica Peter . . .

    i think anyone with any sort of semi-common name is naive if they think there is only one of them out there.

    my step dad’s name has 23 million hits!

    and me, i’m not even real and i am like all first 120 pages of search results in google and yahoo

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