Paul Walsh
BIMA, Chair
10
Jan

Facebook doesn’t SPAM you, your friends SPAM you

Posted by: Paul Walsh

tech problems don’t exist. people problems exist

There are two points I’d like to comment on, both have been inspired by recent conversations on Twitter. I won’t name names because there are too many to list and I don’t have the time to do all the hyperlinking right now (sorry guys).

Conversations taking place on Twitter

1.

Facebook is dead. Twitter is the new Facebook. Facebook has had its day.

My response.

Facebook isn’t dead. It might have appeared to be dead to Twitter users because most of their friends on Facebook were quiet over the Christmas period. That’s because Twitter users are a minute fraction of Facebook users. Twitter is mostly made up of extremely early adopting geeks. Most Facebook users would have been on leave over the Christmas period and not sad enough (like me!) to sign on every ten minutes.

2.

I’m sick of Facebook spamming me. Facebook is full of SPAM. I hate the SPAM on Facebook.

My response.

Facebook does not SPAM you. Your ‘friends’ SPAM you. If you don’t want to receive updates, or requests to join events and groups, tell your friends to stop sending invites. If your friends don’t listen to you, remove them from your friends list.

If you don’t want people to write on your wall, remove it, or make it visible to a select few.

Facebook is nothing more than a technology/platform. Your friends are the ones you should look at, not Facebook :)

What do you think?

Feel free to connect to me on Twitter.

Feel free to connect to me on Facebook.

-Add to del.icio.us || -Digg this || -Reddit || -Sphere it
 Print it ||  Email it to a friend ||  Leave a Comment
Trackback-URL
Feed Icon RSS Feed for comments

 2 Comments so far

4Avatars v0.3.1
Jasmineb said,         
January 11 2008

Well actually I think there’s an increasing problem with spam from all kinds of social networking sites. This week alone I’ve had a request from someone I’ve never heard of wanting to be my ‘friend’ on Netlog and a ‘question’ from someone else I’ve never heard of allegedly asking me this question on Fanbox.com.

I’ve never heard of either site but when I mentioned the second to a geek friend of mine he pointed me to http://spamhuntress.com/2007/12/15/smsac-turns-into-fanbox/
which explains a lot about what’s going on with Fanbox and other, similar sites. the comments on the blog are v useful too.

I think it’s annoying and unhelpful. These sites have got to stop this indiscriminate spamming and, as you say, users have to get cleverer about how they use them, if the HAVE to use them. It’s particularly dumb to let the site find your ‘friends’ by looking up your email list.

Personally I find it hard enough to get the time to meet my real friends face-to-face without being ‘friends’ with people I’ve never met and probably have nothing in common with on random social networking sites!

mygif
Paul Walsh said,         
January 11 2008

But Jasmine, you could argue that you and I don’t communicate as often as we used to before you left Facebook ;-)

At least Facebook doesn’t allow companies to harvest by making sure it’s an image and not plain text. I hear what you’re saying though - it is a pain and we need to become more clever.

Welcome stranger, please leave your comments below

  Username (required)

  Email (required)

  Website

leave your comments below

Subsribes to this topic Comment Rss or TrackBack

Subscribe

Subscribe by Author

(by clicking the orange icon)

Members' Blogs