DEAR JON

Here a 'Dear John' letter is a letter sent by one person to finish a relationship with another person. Obviously in the digital age, emails have largely replaced letters. In this case I didn't actually dump Jon, he dumped me. But why stop the facts get in the way of a good metaphor. I will enjoy writing this letter to Jon!

Below is my letter to Jon Buckheit, FriendFinder Networks' chief executive officer. It's by being a paying gold member for many years of Adult FriendFinder (AFF), one of the many FriendFinder Networks' sites, through which I unfortunately got to know about Jon.

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Dear Jon

I know you'll read this letter even though I've not posted it to you - stamps are now very expensive here in Britain, and even though I've not emailed it to you - emails are just so dehumanising, don't you think?

You've let it be known that you're following the people you've recently banned from your site who have migrated here, or maybe you've ordered a minion to follow us and report back to you. But either way, you've made it easy for me to communicate with you.

Let's be honest, it wasn't easy to communicate with you, and especially your colleague Ali R, after I got banned but obviously you had important chief executive duties and Ali R had important customer service duties to attend to.

I hope you will enjoy reading this letter just as much as I've enjoyed writing this letter. Where do I start? Well perhaps it's because I can. I can write this letter here whereas I couldn't write such a letter on your site.

It seems you don't like criticism. No one does, but most people learn to handle and even learn from criticism. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not for abusive criticism. I'm all for constructive criticism. Allowing such criticism is a way that all reputable organisations can adapt and become better organisations - learn, improve and prosper. If you had spent time trying to fix the glaring problems of the site - for example, the arbitrary denial of posts, comments and images by Tier 1 and the site's inability to roll out new features without making existing and working features crash, which led to criticism of the site, then you wouldn't have had to purge the critics. It's that simple!

Also, it seems you don't like communication. The site you run is terrible at communicating with its members. I know it can be really difficult as a social media site communicating en masse to its members, but I do suggest you give it a try!

And finally it seems you don't trust staff you employ directly or indirectly. You allowed the process of reviewing and approving blog posts, comments, replies and images to be farmed out to so-called Tier 1. Tier 1 were incompetent at reviewing and approving postings to see whether they complied with the site's terms of use, but no doubt that was the cheapest way to do things for you. Nonetheless, just in case Tier 1 allowed a blog or group post critical of your organisation even if the postings complied with the site's terms of use, you instructed Tier 2 of Site Support, who should have better things to do, to follow established bloggers to monitor their posts for such criticism. How else could you have banned me when my seemingly ban-worthy post was approved by Tier 1? You have two layers of surveillance going on. But the extra surveillance isn't about weeding out bloggers who post about under-age sex, incest or anything else illegal that may have escaped Tier 1's attentions, it was all about monitoring criticism of you and your site. You clearly didn't have the balls to change your site's terms of use to make criticism of you a breach of the site's terms so we all know where we stood on your totalitarian site. Pathetic. Anyone would think you're paranoid! Do you ever wonder what your staff think about working for you? That's a rhetorical question by the way.

However, it seems you rate yourself as a businessman. Now let's put the allegations that you stole this site from someone else to one side. From where I'm standing, I don't think you are a good businessman. And here are three reasons why I think you're a very bad businessman.

First, you've allowed Ali R to be in post as head of customer services, someone who refuses to communicate with customers and someone who expects customers to grovel and apologise if they dare to complain. This doesn't seem to be how a customer services head should behave. Ali R's skill set doesn't seem quite right for the post he's holding, but yet you still keep him on. [Hi Ali, I know you're reading this and I hope you're enjoying the read too!]

Second, your business model seems to be about attracting as many men as you can with the false promise that they'll 'get laid tonight'. Many of these men emboldened by your marketing claims are abusive in their dealings with women on the site. Does that ever worry you as a businessman or maybe you need to be a businesswoman for it to worry you? Also, you seem to be tempting standard members, mainly men, with a few privileges of communicating direct to women hoping that they'll upgrade to paid gold membership once those privileges are denied to them. What does this say about your views on women and particularly women on your site? Surely you're not using women as bait because, if so, that makes you a pimp.

Third, the site is nothing without its members. You took a business decision, or allowed Ali R to take a business decision, to ban four members of your site, all established bloggers who brought something to the AFF table. How is that good business? You decided to turn on your members and blame them for standard members not becoming paid gold members. We were just members of your site, not your paid minions. And what you did just didn't affect us as banned members but affected existing members as well. You turned on your members to blame them for your shortcomings, great business! You need to get real Jon, otherwise you're heading for a big fall as a businessman. And I for one won't be shedding a tear if that befalls you.

You don't seem to care about the site. It's almost as if you're deliberately trashing the site so it loses value and therefore you don't have to pay out as much if and hopefully when you lose that court case. Mel Brooks would have been very proud of you, though I'm not so sure that your parents and children would be quite so proud of you for pulling that low stunt!

Oh Jon, I've so enjoyed writing this letter, I hope you made it to the end. And please feel free to leave a comment below. I'm sure chief executive officers are allowed to do that. You can ask Ali R to leave a comment too but tell him to have a good wash first as I don't want a bad smell left on my blog after he's visited!

Now I know you dumped me first but it seems you and Ali R are happy to have me back. But too late, I'm now dumping you as I no longer want to blog with you.

You may have been able to muzzle me on AFF but you can't muzzle me here or elsewhere.

Yours,

Stephen (aka spunkycumfun)