Test the Waters

This isn't the fanciest idea, or the most widely applicable, but it should be a standard concern and ethic for the online community. Facebook apps are neat right? But every single one of them tries to opt you into sending it out to all of your friends and every invite to the friends requires them to install an app to even see what the hell it is about.

My two words on this are 1) always only offer people to share something with their friends after they've done whatever they want with it. Otherwise it will always feel like you're being pressured into spamming your friends and keeping you from what you want to do. My second cent (2) is that you should give the friends being invited as much of a sample as possible. Obviously if the program needs to be installed for have its basic functions you can't quite let a person play on it before installing, but the friend should be able to view a preview, at least a description of what in the hell it is they are getting into before they have to install.

Point of all this being that nothing is too hard to undo on the internet, but that there are so many options of things to do, it is always better to give more information and to let the wary discerning people decide for themselves. Everyone is a skeptic and the worst thing is to make someone feel tricked or forced to do anything.

General internet ethics people.