Ruffling Symbaloo's Feathers

I've ruffled some feathers this week with my tweets on Twitter about Symbaloo.  However, I am more than upset about their practice.

For those of you that haven't heard yet, I was one of the first, if not the first, Symbaloo Premium account holder.  It was a trial as everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.  With lost of struggle, it finally was set up.

And, I cancelled my personal account but look here:  http://www.symbaloo.com/profile/myweb4ed.  They still exist and I have no control of them either.

So, I made webmixes (a collection of links pertaining to educational topics, in my case) and posted them in a variety of places, etc.  But, I MADE THEM!  I put my work and my effort into them.  I'm talking over 80 of these webmixes!

No where in any of the sign up information did it say that Premium meant you lose ownership of your webmixes.  But, that is exactly how Symbaloo does it.  I no longer have control of them.  I wanted to close my Premium account because it basically doesn't do anything.  Well, here's the deal...I can't.  And, they took my account and my webmixes and have control.  I can't delete them.

There's more...I was also the first Symbaloo Pro certified.  The other day I get this message "It's been a while since we've seen activity of your PD PRO Status. We've made some changes to the PD PRO Program and you will need to reapply for the new year."

Well, they changed the rules for that, too, without notice to me.  First, you have to understand that becoming a Pro doesn't come free.  You have to pay for and pass certification courses/tests.  Ok, that's no problem.  But then they change the rules and determine arbitrarily that there are more hoops to jump through including ALL of the following requirements:

• 4 workshops a year
• submit 1 PD lesson a year
• write 2 Tutorials a year,
• write 2 Edtech blog posts per year
• host 2 #symchats a year on Twitter

Are they kidding me? Do you have a clue what educators have on their plate?  In my case, it's not only education but two heart transplants, heart surgery, and, well, life.  But, it's even worse that they changed this without notification to any of us.  They know about the transplants and even asked about the campaign for my grandson's transplant.  But, they certainly didn't offer to waive any of the "requirements" they dreamed up without my knowledge.  If I wasn't working (and c'mon, that amount of requirements is plain out work) then too bad, so sad.

And, now, Symbaloo is clearly miffed at me for being honest about this on Twitter.

They have a great product.  It's useful and offers a lot of great benefits.  But they have no business taking control of my items that I created.  So, it's simple, if you use them, be aware. 

So, what's the solution?  It's easy.  Just check out My Link Cloud at mylinkcloud.com.  It's awesome.