SocialMinder Alpha: threat, or menace?

I received an email from a trusted friend offering a free invitation to the “closed” alpha test of a application called SocialMinder that’s supposed to map emails to my Linkedin network and provide some analysis and intelligence. I signed up,then let my friend know I’d done so. He immediately responded that SocialMinder had spammed his address book without authorization, so if you got a request from me to sign up for the service, ignore it. It appears to be either a scam or a severely broken alpha. I received an “action report” after signing up, and all the links in the email were broken (“502 Bad Gateway”). I tried to log in at the site, same error message. It appears to be working for some people, but until I see it, I can’t recommend it – and I haven’t authorized the site to contact anyone in my behalf.