FaceBook Finally Gets Customer Focused

FacebookI am glad to see FaceBook is starting to slap down the worst offenders of their applications.

They are targeting developers who cross the line with unacceptable behavior. You know all the spam you get on FaceBook? Most of it is from overly aggressive “invitations” from these widgets aiming to grab as much market share and spam database as possible.

Yes, a lot of the spam is also people “throwing sheep” and other such mindless drivel, but it’s a start. The more contacts you have the more spam you are going to get, so your “friends” need to take as much blame as the developers, but it is the developers who create the tools that make it easy for your contacts to abuse your relationship.

When many people refer to viral marketing, what they mean is “name grabbing”, that is getting each person to offer up as many of their friends contact details as possible. These applications push users into mining their contact lists, often making it mandatory to invite all your friends, or seem to be.

OK, hearing that SuperWall and RockYou have been slapped down is not going to make me use the service again, but it is encouraging to know that the company knows its application developers are giving them a bad name.

Posted on July 8, 2008 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Web 2.0

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