subject: Has facebook really got the spam factor? [print this page] In recent months I have become quite a big fan of FaceBook and in many ways it has taken over my love for Twitter. Though I could never give either of them up as I love them both equally. They both offer the opportunity to chat to people and network with future and present business contacts. I often find myself slightly more happy with FaceBook for one they are known as being the anti-spam social networking site. If you invite too many friends at random they will often suspend you or give you a friendly warning compared to Twitter where you would only get suspended if someone reports you. I also like the fact that on FaceBook you can have more fun than on Twitter because of all the different games and song lists that you can build. You can do pretty much anything on there - I remember once writing a list of my favourite Tom Hanks film during a spare five minutes. I was really excited because I love Tom Hanks films and have probably seem most of them even a couple of his recent flops. However just because I am a Tom Hanks film fan doesnt mean that every single one of my friends on FaceBook is to! This is where the problem lies.. Its what you call viral marketing gone crazy - if you submit lists, play games, participate in quizzes etc you will be expected to tell your friends about it before it even makes its way on to your FaceBook wall. This is so that the company that is running the application is getting lots of viral traffic and the only person that loses out is your FaceBook friends. I didnt see the big deal at first until my FaceBook numbers increased and it has got worse and worse. Now I have over 4,000 friends on Facebook and all it takes is for a small percent to take part in these games and I am very much a victim of the spam factor on FaceBook. I logged on today for example and found that I had over 120 game application requests since yesterday far more than I could possibly get through on a daily basis. Then when you add to this the number of event requests, fan page suggestions and other suggestions you have had over 200 things to deal with. For a following of just 4,000 this is totally crazy figures compared to dealing with a similar figure on Twitter for 65,000 followers. With all this in mind I would honestly say there is more spam on FaceBook that there is on Twitter. The only benefit is that its quicker to delete on FaceBook but still are big part of it. I also find that my wall on FaceBook also gets spammed and have now employed someone just to deal with my spam. Which doesnt really make me that mad as at the end of the day social media provides us with endless free marketing opportunities so for this we are getting a free virtual advertising ticket. If I did have to pay for it though I would probably think twice because after paying staff to reduce my spamming levels it would become very expensive. There is no such thing as perfect internet marketing and to get to the gold we have to do a bit of shovelling first. I am sure during 2010 FaceBook will take action towards the spammers and in the meantime all of us that hate mafia wars or farmville will have to grin and bare it.
