The eCRUSH network consisted of two sites: eCRUSH.com and
eSPIN.com. The network was acquired by
Hearst Media on December 31, 2006. The original eCRUSH site was opened on February 14, 1999 in Chicago by Clark Benson and Karen DeMars Pillsbury. It pre-dated social networking sites such as
Friendster
Friendster was a social network game based in Mountain View, California, founded by Jonathan Abrams and launched in March 2003.Eric Eldon, August 4, 2008.Friendster raises $20 million, nabs a Googler to be CEO VentureBeat. Retrieved December 4, 2 ...
,
MySpace and
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
.
eSPIN
eSPIN was a
spin the bottle
Spin the bottle is a kissing party game commonly played by teenagers. The game was very popular among teenagers during the second half of the 20th century because it fostered "sexual" interactions between boys and girls. It has even been describe ...
-like social networking service backed by a matchmaking engine. Users would "spin the bottle" to find other users (although they could also search); the site also had quizzes. Registration was free, however, one had to pay a monthly fee or unlock various tools via sponsors to do key processes like chatting or sending messages.
''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' cited that eSPIN had registered more than 3.8 million users as of January 2007.
ComScore Media Metrix measured their monthly unique visitors at 1,514,000 and monthly page views at 133MM (December 2008).
Age restrictions
eSPIN prohibited minors from contacting adults and vice versa, and their administrators screened user-submitted content before it was made public. Additionally, minors were prohibited from publicly posting contact information like
email address
An email address identifies an email box to which messages are delivered. While early messaging systems used a variety of formats for addressing, today, email addresses follow a set of specific rules originally standardized by the Internet Engineer ...
es and
screen names.
eCRUSH
eCRUSH.com was a teen-oriented
anonymous matching
Anonymous matching is a matchmaking method facilitated by computer databases, in which each user confidentially selects people they are interested in dating and the computer identifies and reports matches to pairs of users who share a mutual attrac ...
site designed to obviate fears of
unrequited love
Unrequited love or one-sided love is love that is not openly reciprocated or understood as such by the beloved. The beloved may not be aware of the admirer's deep and pure affection, or may consciously reject it. The Merriam Webster Online Dic ...
. A user created a list of people he was interested in, and had the option of sending anonymous emails to those individuals indicating that an unidentified person had a crush on them. The recipient could then log on to the site and create a list of people they were interested in. If the two people selected each other, then the system notified them of the match. This system is a type of
viral marketing
Viral marketing is a business strategy that uses existing social networks to promote a product mainly on various social media platforms. Its name refers to how consumers spread information about a product with other people, much in the same way tha ...
in which awareness of the site spreads among friends and acquaintances similarly to a virus as they list each other as crushes and send emails.
Other aspects of eCRUSH
Demographics
In accordance with the
Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998
The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) is a United States federal law, located at ().
The act, effective April 21, 2000, applies to the online collection of personal information by persons or entities under U.S. juri ...
, eCRUSH shut down the existing accounts of children who identified themselves as being under thirteen. According to a ''
Red Herring
A red herring is a figurative expression referring to a logical fallacy in which a clue or piece of information is or is intended to be misleading, or distracting from the actual question.
Red herring may also refer to: Animals
* Red herring (fis ...
'' article, "eCRUSHONLINE.com is seizing an elusive but highly desirable audience of young, mostly female viewers, ranging in age from 10 to 37." According to that article, the service saw its biggest growth at high schools and colleges.
The "Don't Be An Idiot" Campaign
In January 2009, eSPIN began the "Don't Be An Idiot" campaign to educate teens about
online safety
Internet safety or online safety or cyber safety and E-Safety is trying to be safe on the internet and is the act of maximizing a user's awareness of personal safety and security risks to Information privacy, private information and property associ ...
. The campaign consisted of a safety hub page, a safety quiz, a YouTube video and a place to submit safety stories.
Spam related issues
The company's emails promised, "At eCRUSH, we know how important your love life is to you, and we would never take advantage of your emotions just to spam your crush." However, an April 22, 1999 article in
Ohio University
Ohio University is a Public university, public research university in Athens, Ohio. The first university chartered by an Act of Congress and the first to be chartered in Ohio, the university was chartered in 1787 by the Congress of the Confeder ...
's ''The Post'' argued, "It is rare to be matched up with your one and only by trickery or bizarre circumstance. When eCRUSH's initial e-mail is sent, the recipient might discard it like a chain letter or an invitation to a porn site".
The "Someone has an eCRUSH on you" emails did not list the name of anyone the friend knows; therefore, a recipient unfamiliar with eCRUSH could very well interpret them as
spam
Spam may refer to:
* Spam (food), a canned pork meat product
* Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages
** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages
** Messaging spam, spam targeting users of instant messaging ( ...
. Moreover, as with many commercial emails, eCRUSH's messages contained images that, for privacy reasons, would be peremptorily blocked by most modern email clients – another
red flag Red flag may refer to:
* Red flag (idiom), a metaphor for something signalling a problem
** Red flag warning, a term used by meteorologists
** Red flag (battle ensign), maritime flag signaling an intention to give battle with no quarter (fight to ...
suggesting spam to many users. Lastly, the email subject lines – for example, "Someone you know likes you!" — resembled those employed in mass mailings from other dating sites.
Deactivation of Websites
On August 1, 2011, the entire eCRUSH/eSPIN network was deactivated by Hearst Digital Media, and all eCRUSH-related domains began redirecting to a Seventeen.com-hosted landing page.
References
External links
Official websiteeSPIN-the-Bottle (from archive)(original)
Don't Be An Idiot hub
{{Hearst
Defunct social networking services