Digital Common Sense

5/9/06 See a revisit and updated thoughts on iPeerGrid -

iPeerGrid Revisted

I am not recommending this to anyone at present. I post it here for your thoughts because this is something new to me that warrants research from my viewpoint. I received this email today, and my internal scam alarms all started gonging away.

Dear Ken,

We would like to personally extend an invitation to you to become an active participant in what we believe is the most powerful peer to peer collaboration platform available; iPeerGrid. Over 6,500 senior executives, including over 2,400 at the “C” level and representing the vast majority of the Fortune 1000, are members of the GRID.

iPeerGrid is committed to enabling peer-to-peer collaboration for the global business community. Our platform is the first of its kind to offer a secure, confidential, even anonymous means to effectively collaborate with broad or highly targeted peer groups on a global scale.

Peer collaboration has proven to be a highly effective means for knowledge sharing and quickly gaining insight into an unlimited array of business issues and challenges. Whether you are a CFO wanting to exchange ideas and best practices with other CFO’s, or an IT professional looking for feedback on ERP systems, iPeerGrid offers access to peers capable of providing the insight you need.

At the core of the GRID is an engine that allows members to send email blasts to a very broad audience, a single recipient or any member subset in between. Target peer populations are member defined by selecting a combination of process areas, technology areas, industries, job classifications and company size. So, based on the specific nature of your inquiry, you can fine tune a subset of the member population to receive it to ensure the highest possible quality of responses.

The GRID also provides access to Special Interest Groups (SIG). These are groups that typically cross industries, process areas, technology areas, etc. and provide a convenient forum for members to discuss issues relative to their common interest. Examples might include Sarbanes-Oxley, Best Practices Exchange, European Business Community, etc. By joining one or more of these groups, members can make a single inquiry that will reach all
members of the SIG, but not any members outside of the SIG.

Importantly, iPeerGrid is committed to member privacy. Your personal information including name, email address, etc. are never revealed to other members. All inquires are anonymous. It is entirely up to each member as to whether any personal information is shared.

Once you have completed the member profile, you will have a customized Member Home Page providing statistics on your specific peer population. You will also have access to content relevant to your profile automatically populated on your page. Functions available to members include:

* Peer Inquiries
* Special Interest Group (SIG) Inquiries
* Notifications
* Upload Content
* Peer Inquiry Search
* SIG Inquiry Search
* Membership Search
* Content Search
* Join Special Interest Groups
* Webinars
* Membership / Account Status

The GRID maintains a simple philosophy. Enable peer collaboration for senior business executives that is easy to initiate, unlimited in flexibility to define target peer groups, highly confidential, and with total anonymity, and members will quickly adopt it as one of their most trusted sources of business information. And, it’s working.

Follow this link www.ipeergrid.com to create your custom user profile. Membership is free and you can begin taking advantage of our global peer network immediately.

Other options exist to collaborate with your peers, but we are confident that you will find the iPeerGrid platform to provide the most powerful, efficient, and cost effective channel to access other senior executives. But there’s much more offered on the GRID. Give us a try. We guarantee you’ll become a routine GRID patron.

Our Best Wishes,
Your GRID Support Team

Why did my alarrms go off, you ask. When I get something like this from an unknown source, I’m always skeptical, especially if I haven’t heard of it. I do very,

very

basic research.

First some words in the message leapt off the screen — At the core of the GRID is an engine that allows members to send email blasts to a very broad audience, a single recipient or any member subset in between. I’m sorry, but that just feels…well spammy. This tool allows me to send focused spam to C-level managers? They sound like a potentially lucrative target.

Off to the web site. iPeerGrid looks like a nice trademarked sort of name someone invested some effort in. Let’s try Google. No a single hit. Not one. Try the intuitively obvious variations and learn that iPeer has been used by some file sharing efforts, not without negative comment in the mix. Peer Grid achieves similar results. Not looking great so far.

REDACTED INFORMATION - SEE BELOW

Conclusions
Nothing tangible other than this just feels hinky. It could be a quite legitmate new startup effort, although it’s not going to overrun LinkedIn or any of the other business oriented efforts from anything I could see.

I didn’t register. I’m not going to at this point. I’m in wait and see mode for now. If Russell is for real and aggressively pursuing this as a legitimate business effort, I have to assume he’s web savvy enough that he’ll see this (even though I consciously chose not to link to it live). If so, I think he’ll contact me and ask me to revisit my comments. On the other hand, if this effort is a front for something else, like an attempt to harvest C-level manager information, I may hear nothing. Or nastiness could ensue. That might be interesting.

If you personally have knowledge of this or firsthand experience, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts. I know the name will catch my attention for some time to come, so I may report back at some future time.

In the meantime, I can only share one comment in terms of advice - caveat emptor. Don’t trust those who don’t earn your trust, lest bad things happen.

Updated 7/31/05
I wanted to take the time to update this, so I’ve pulled this response in to the main body from comments -

Ron Thompson Says:

July 31st, 2005 at 2:26 pm e
I am the co-founder of ipeergrid. I found your comments to be informative and of high value. Accordingly, some adjustments to site text and overall messaging is in order.

We are a legitimate start-up. The site is in beta mode and will be improved over time….hopefully with some VC funding. We do not consider ourselves competition to LinkedIn, Spoke or similar services. Our vision is to provide targeted peer access, on demand, to enable knowledge sharing in the global business community. We have work to do, improvements to make, and we know it. But we are making progress. An 800 number will be posted soon. And yes, we are outsourcing site hosting.

Please keep your eye on us and comment as you see fit.

Your constructive feedback is appreciated.

Thanks,

Ron also pointed out that the Russell Thompson I mentioned has no affiliation with this new venture. I guess that’s one of the hazard’s of serach engines caching information and recycling of email addresses over time. Regardless, Ron took the time to respond and I wanted to thank him for his efforts at building his new venture.

Updated 8/1/05
Based on Ron’s polite request and the open approach he took to responding to my post, I’ve removed the DNS information that was posted here. Anyone with basic DNS skills can perfor whois lookups and find current information and there’s no reason to leave it listed here duplicating information that is easily updated.

Filed by Ken at 11:32 am under General