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Don’t SPAM your old friends

by Mike Mueller- builder of Custom Facebook Business (fan) Pages

If there is any constant in Social Media it’s “Change”. Change is always happening.

Last week Facebook changed the way status updates work and added a LIVE Feed option. The change also triggered a new function. Each time you accept a new friend request that notification then shows on all your existing friends walls.

For those paying attention, it used to just show up on your wall – only full status updates populated to your friends walls. Confusing, eh?

Still confused? Here’s how this looks now…

To me, that’s SPAM (just my opinion).

Don’t blame Jim Deitch! He didn’t do this on purpose – quite the opposite, he was just going about his business quietly accepting friend requests. I was doing the same when Catherine Read sent me a message letting me know the issue. Not only did she let me know – she also told me how to fix it! That’s a true Friend!

Here’s how to adjust your settings…

As you might expect, there are a few people that are not happy about the latest changes. if you feel like a little group hug – how about 1 Million plus? http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16210262

Remember that there are two sides to the coin and some people welcome the new change

http://www.facebook.com/posted.php?id=682007215&share_id=169321060212&comments=1#s169321060212

So who’s right? What do you think?

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Tagged as: Business, Facebook, LinkedIn, Marketing, Online Communities, Social Media, Social network, Twitter

iangreenleigh

Mike-

This is annoying, indeed. But is it truly SPAM? We both know there is no Webster's definition that can capture the changing nature of SPAM, but my definition incorporates intent. For something to be SPAM in my book, it must be intentionally sent or transmitted.

mikemueller

Ian -
In my book it's not really Spam, I agree with your "intentional" aspect. I was using the term more for the shock value than the agreed definition.

I did look it up in Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(electronic) "Spam is the abuse of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately"
Then found some others like : http://www.spamhaus.org/definition.html
and http://spam.abuse.net/overview/whatisspam.shtml all of which don't mention the intent aspect which we both agree on.

Interesting, eh?

iangreenleigh

Very interesting. I think the term "abuse" implies ill-intentioned action, and if you'll notice the last URL contains the term "abuse"- so, I'm thinking out of the three links, only one doesn't address intent in one form or the other.

At the same time (here I go), when someone gives control of their twitter account to any kind of app, and this app DMs all their followers from their account, someone is spamming. It might not be the person behind the twitter handle, but it sure is intentional on the part of the app authors.

Teresa Berry

Hey Mike I read and retweeted from twitter (after changing my setting in facebook) thanks once again for being on top of the changes. you go!