Well, it's Monday - I guess that means it's time for another douchebag to create a startup on the Internet. Introducing, Allthis.com. They list themselves as being in "beta" on their website and claim to be "the ten-minute exchange". Apparently users can bid on and purchase blocks of other users' time! How exciting! And, oh, hey, Mashable wrote an article about them! Wow! Awesome! You know what's even more awesome? You likely already have a profile there! Where people can buy 10 minutes or YOUR time! Fantastic. Look at the notable digerati that have already signed up! All of these profiles have since been removed by AllThis. See the updates at the bottom. * Mike Monteiro * Marco Arment * Jason Santa Maria * Jeff Zeldman * Frank Chimero * Merlin Mann * Dan Benjamin * John Siracusa * Andy Ihnatko * Leo Laporte * David Chartier * Jeremy Keith * Jared Spool * Jacqui Cheng * Tom Merritt * Veronica Belmont * MG Siegler Ok, I'll cut the crap. This site has me really steamed. I reached out to them on Twitter to ask just WTF they were doing:

@allthis My Twitter profile photo is copyrighted by me. If you scrap my profile prepare for a letter from my lawyer and an invoice. — Joel Housman (@joelhousman) December 19, 2011

To which they replied:

@joelhousman No scraping. Joel, would you like your allthis page removed? — allthis (@allthis) December 19, 2011

Really? No scraping? Then how come each of those profiles listed above are IDENTICAL to the metadata that is listed within the profiles on those social services they're associated with. My response:

These tools have an interesting definition of scraping. RT @allthis @joelhousman No scraping. Joel would you like your allthis page removed? — Joel Housman (@joelhousman) December 19, 2011

Their response:

@joelhousman Those pages are created by their friends who hope to see them on @allthis. Do you have friends who are allthis members? — allthis (@allthis) December 19, 2011

So apparently, our "friends" created those pages for us. You know, by painstakingly copying our profiles, verbatim, and listing them on their site. Bullshit. This "startup" is scraping prominent peoples' Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn profiles and listing them on their site in order seed the site with accounts that their users might want to buy the time of, without first asking permission to do so of those users or even telling them that they've done so. Did they think no one would notice? Did they really think this was okay to do? Did they really think there wouldn't be pushback from these users by blatantly scraping their profiles, including avatar images, in order to misrepresent that they were using the site? When they finally decide to put up a defense to this, they'll no doubtedly point out that each of the profiles listed above has this disclaimer featured prominently beside the person's name. So prominent that they chose to display the text as a light grey on a white background. It's all about the user experience, after all: Also…"yet"? Awfully presumptuous, I think. It looks though, as I'm not alone in being upset about this:

Does @allthis realize the hostile interaction they set up between me and someone who “bought my time” feeling I owe it to them? — Mike Monteiro (@Mike_FTW) December 19, 2011

I’m honestly impressed that someone could come up with a douchier business model than Plaxo, yet @allthis has done it. — Mike Monteiro (@Mike_FTW) December 19, 2011

@allthis You are not authorized to represent me or sell my time. Remove my profile, name, and image from your site immediately. — Marco Arment (@marcoarment) December 19, 2011

Update, 12:45 pm eastern: Amy Hoy has also written an excellent post on this topic.

They will remove you from their site if you threaten them — however, they will pretend to not “understand” why you are “upset” — and go on thieving from other people. So, the best way to stop this is to enforce our copyrights. If they steal from you, don’t bother telling them to remove the profile. She's done a lot of leg work to find out who their DNS and Hosting is provided by and posted their info on her site. [Check it out](http://unicornfree.com/2011/what-to-do-when-allthis-steals-your-photo-bio/). Update, 2:26 pm eastern: AllThis, in response to the deluge of negative Tweets, has begun removing a lot of the prominent profiles listed above. It looks like Mike Monteiro got his lawyer on the case:

Shady business-model startup @allthis has deleted my fake account page. Make enough noise and they will delete yours too. cc @MyLawyerGabe. — Mike Monteiro (@Mike_FTW) December 19, 2011

@Mike_FTW Mike, would love your honest opinion on how we should change the non-member pages. Looks like we confused and angered some people. — allthis (@allthis) December 19, 2011

Happy to help, @allthis. Start with not having pages for PEOPLE WHO HAVEN’T JOINED YOUR SITE! — Mike Monteiro (@Mike_FTW) December 19, 2011

@Mike_FTW OK. Can an existing member express his wish that you join the site and link to your Twitter profile? — allthis (@allthis) December 19, 2011

@allthis No. Don’t use tricks to expand your member base. Get people to join by offering a useful benefit. — Mike Monteiro (@Mike_FTW) December 19, 2011

It’s telling that the @allthis site doesn’t list a single human being’s name as a responsible party. — Mike Monteiro (@Mike_FTW) December 19, 2011

In other news, check out the newly launched [AllThisPR Twitter account](https://twitter.com/#!/allthisPR)!

Update 10:19 AM, Dec 20: It appears that all of the accounts I'd listed above have now been removed from their site. According to this Tweet they sent to Amy Hoy last night, they've now turned off non-member pages:

@amyhoy Amy, we are working precisely on that right now. There will be no non-member profiles anymore. Thanks for caring and persistence. — allthis (@allthis) December 19, 2011

Good work Internet.

Update 12:39 PM, Dec 20: AllThis seems to be waging a war on Twitter against it's detractors. These people are the height of class:

@Mike_FTW The convo between @allthis and @jemaleddin makes me want to laugh, cry, and punch babies. bit.ly/rRffdR — Nic Lake (@niclake) December 20, 2011

Another instance of their classy communication techniques:

The idiots at @allthis continue to mock the people they want as users. It’d be fascinating if it weren’t sociopathic. twitter.com/allthis/status… — Mike Monteiro (@Mike_FTW) December 20, 2011

Oh, here’s a screenshot of the tweet @allthis just deleted. (Fucking amateurs.) post.ly/4OTDV — Mike Monteiro (@Mike_FTW) December 20, 2011

Update 2:09 PM, Dec 20: In addition to hitting BoingBoing, the story is now climbing up the page on Techmeme. Chris Sacca has weighed in and AllThis looks to finally start showing some deference regarding their actions:

@allthis Your entire site is based on deception. Start with an opt-in or you will find yourself on the wrong end of fights you can't win. — Chris Sacca (@sacca) December 19, 2011

Update: 8:00 AM Dec 21: Nick Douglas, writing for Slackstory chimed in:

> I think Allthis thinks they’re being cool and edgy? That would count if their business were, like, funny t-shirts. But Allthis is about helping nerds and suits network. They really wanna shoot for Louis C.K. and come across as Dane Cook? This site won’t make trading time cool. It just makes it gross, desperate and awkward.

Update, 10:56 AM, Dec 21: Matt Gemmel wrote an excellent piece on AllThis as well. He was one of their victims too:

I clicked the link, and saw that I somehow already had a page on their site (also since removed by them), which showed who currently held the supposed right to ten minutes of my time, and even showing my supposed calendar over the next few days (all times were marked as available, of course, since they had no knowledge of my actual availability). I highly recommend [you read](http://mattgemmell.com/2011/12/21/allthis-sleazy-dishonesty/) Matt's article. His commentary on the whole fiasco was put much better than I could have done so myself. Update, 11:40 AM, Dec 21: {merlin voice}Turns out{/merlin voice}, AllThis are still being assholes on Twitter:

Interesting allthis saw my tweet to @joelhousman,I didn't @mention them RT allthis: @justin_horn These rants are stale and self-serving — Justin Horn (@justin_horn) December 21, 2011

@joelhousman and now they deleted that tweet twitter.com/#!/allthis/sta… Yeah, these guys are definitely not shady....riiiiight. — Justin Horn (@justin_horn) December 21, 2011

Update, 11:54 AM, Dec 21: More good news for AllThis. Also, there was a puff piece posted on VentureBeat yesterday about AllThis in which they had interviewed one of the founders. I did not notice, but GigaOm did that this article was written by the same reporter who formerly worked at Mashable, and wrote that glowing review of them back in October. Make of that what you will... Bobbie Johnson at GigaOm, wrote an excellent post about user hostile techniques such as this starting to show up more and more within the industry:

I think what jars me the most is that these companies almost all claim to be “social”, but they are in fact employing marketing techniques that are uniquely anti-social. They use our images and our identities to fluff up their services and boost their bank accounts. They do all the things you or I would be pilloried for. In the grand scheme of things, shadow profiles are just a tiny part of this encroachment. But they are still bad behavior that help no one except the companies involved (and even then, they probably don’t help them in the long run). Shadow profiles are precisely the sort of marketing method that has been rewarded — rather than punished — over the last few years. > Perhaps it’s about time we really held them to account for it. Update, 12:33 PM, Dec 21: David Chartier noticed that AllThis has now removed the search box from their site so users can no longer find out of their profile was also scrapped.

Funny, @allthis removed its search box. Can't imagine why. — David Chartier (@chartier) December 21, 2011

Also, Liam Boogar, writing for The Rude Baguette, wrote a post about what AllThis should have done and what they did wrong: