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February 20, 2008

Friend Spam Is The Worst Kind Of All

Michael Arrington

45 comments »

Facebook announced a number of steps today to battle the growing problem of application spam - stuff that is sent from your Facebook friends asking you to try out new services. Generally, applications force users to send these invitations in order to get access to the more interesting features.

The result can be dozens or hundreds of messages a day asking you to join some service that you really don’t want to join. And if you do join it, you make the whole spam cycle continue.

The growing problem has led to a number of users taking matters into their own hands, Facebook-style. The “No, I will NOT invite 20 friends just to add your application!” group on Facebook, for example, now has nearly 100,000 followers.

Facebook, eager to avoid “Pulling a Plaxo,” isn’t sitting still either. They’ve shown a willingness to put a stop to bad behavior by application developers in the past. Today, they announced additional steps on their blog.

First, users can block applications when they receive a request, so no additional requests from that app will get through. Second, they added a “clear all” requests feature that erases all pending requests (my new favorite, and most used, Facebook feature). Also, Facebook is watching how many people block or ignore application requests - too many, and an application has restrictions placed on it.

There are a few other tweaks as well, which will hopefully have the combined effect of reducing the problem. I also have my own method for dealing with it - by removing friends who get too spammy.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 1:07 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Auditing

    February 20th, 2008 at 1:11 pm

    finally, they should had done this right after they released app platform.
    i know many of my friends who liked facebook in its early days but started to get annoyed with this app chaos.

  2. Josh

    February 20th, 2008 at 1:14 pm

    Thank you facebook! Now if I could only stop getting Tagged invitations…

  3. Steel

    February 20th, 2008 at 1:15 pm

    Ahhhh..life in the day of a FB junkie must be total hell

  4. allen stern

    February 20th, 2008 at 1:17 pm

    so basically the apps who bought in day 1 (did they pay?) are the only ones who will ever see a large user base.

  5. Jenkins

    February 20th, 2008 at 1:25 pm

    These kinds of problems will plague Facebook forever. There’s a real tension between driving page views and keeping users happy. Tough job.

  6. Garth

    February 20th, 2008 at 1:31 pm

    I think it a shame that so many developers have so little respect for their users. A hint to these people: if you treat people like crap you may profit in the short term, but in the long term you are ruining things not only for yourself, but for everybody else.

    Something about a golden goose comes to mind.

  7. MikeT

    February 20th, 2008 at 1:32 pm

    This is identity theft: an application is sent to me from my friend’s account without my friend’s intention (as I understand).

    Glad to see FB doing something against this annoying trend.

  8. antje wilsch

    February 20th, 2008 at 1:37 pm

    @Garth, it’s what the investors want to see.

  9. scratchiti

    February 20th, 2008 at 1:41 pm

    why don’t they just disallow requiring invites to gain access?

  10. Social Marketing Journal

    February 20th, 2008 at 1:51 pm

    It seems spam will hit any new internet idea eventually. These Facebook application invites have ruined the interest for many users to install or even take a glance at a new application. It’s quite sad to see some developers ruin it for all.

  11. Dallas J Clark

    February 20th, 2008 at 1:54 pm

    So glad this has happened

  12. tyson

    February 20th, 2008 at 1:55 pm

    Great, this is perfect! Now amazing and useful apps like Zombies and Vampires can keep their user bases without having to worry about new competitors.

    I really love those Zombies! I cant wait to bite more chumps:(

  13. Jay Neely

    February 20th, 2008 at 1:57 pm

    It’s very simple.

    Application invites are the forwarded e-mails of our generation.

  14. Mitali P

    February 20th, 2008 at 2:17 pm

    Is any of this going to be included in their mobile apps? I am so sick of getting 15 application requests on my bberry facebook app every morning.

    How about putting a cap on users ability to send invites - you can only send 10 invites a day, total, for all applications. Would at least compel spammy friends to be more selective and not send it to me since I never accept their request!

  15. MistOne

    February 20th, 2008 at 2:21 pm

    this is a very good thing for fb in general but it heavily favors the major incumbents (slide+rockyou to name a few) that built a major portion of their massive presence through the use of these tactics. now they have the astronomical lead in installs - and all new comers have to get them the hard(er) way. of course they cannot be entirely blamed it was the thousands of new apps that really pushed the limit.

    Anything that reduces the clutter is a very good thing - just hope people don’t get too over zealous about ignoring apps, some a still really really cool and the best is yet to come.

  16. Anonymous

    February 20th, 2008 at 2:24 pm

    “stuff that is sent from your Facebook friends asking you to try out new services”

    Isn’t that how Facebook wanted to make money?

  17. Anonymous

    February 20th, 2008 at 2:28 pm

    “this is a very good thing for fb in general but it heavily favors the major incumbents (slide+rockyou to name a few”

    I bet that Slide and RockYou lobbied for this change to be made. Facebook could have made the platform spam free and fair from the get go. Why didn’t they? Because they don’t care about you. Or fairness. They care about money. And staying relevant for longer than 2 years, which they won’t.

  18. Kevin H

    February 20th, 2008 at 3:05 pm

    “They care about money. And staying relevant for longer than 2 years, which they won’t.”

    I too was thinking about the relevance factor - and will facebook self destruct?

  19. Russell

    February 20th, 2008 at 3:17 pm

    by removing friends who get too spammy.

    I stopped sending invites months ago to avoid this issue.

  20. AJ Kohn

    February 20th, 2008 at 3:18 pm

    What about the Flixster quizzes with the embedded requests at the tail end of the quiz? If you’re not paying attention, you suddenly SPAM 20 friends with a Movies from the 80’s quiz.

    I mean, I’m okay with wasting a bit of my time, but don’t make me the unknowing ambassador of time-suck to my friends.

  21. Brig Graff

    February 20th, 2008 at 3:29 pm

    facebook should sell out to yahoo or something, because I think it’s become a bit to unwieldy for the young guys running it. a bit of hubris to turn down $1 billion, i think.

  22. Random Guy

    February 20th, 2008 at 3:43 pm

    They should make the group “No, I will NOT invite 20 friends just to add your application!” into an application. That way we can invite friends to join.

  23. AP

    February 20th, 2008 at 4:02 pm

    This should finish removing the point in creating useless apps for Spambook. Now we’ll really see if this whole thing is just another fad. And “those who have too many friends have no friends”, as the old saying put it.

    Linkedin and other business oriented SNs have a real business model behind them, at least.

  24. No Surprise

    February 20th, 2008 at 4:07 pm

    This sort of control should have been deployed before FB opened up their platform. Sometimes the best intentions have unintended consequences - this said maybe FB understands the error of their own ways (BEACON).

  25. Joshua Walters

    February 20th, 2008 at 4:09 pm

    Honestly, there is an easy way to avoid sending those invites (with the exception of the ones that reward you for it).

    After you ad the application, just exit your browser/tab, and type in Facebook.com again.

    The application is still there (at least it was with the one app I used), and you dont have to send out a single invite.

  26. Blake Shannon

    February 20th, 2008 at 4:49 pm

    There is all ready a group called “Official Facebook Petition: To ban the inviting of friends on Applications” that has 630,550 members.

  27. Kurtlar Vadisi

    February 20th, 2008 at 7:06 pm

    Everything gets spammed or exploited sooner or later.

  28. Rick

    February 21st, 2008 at 4:34 am

    “removing friends”.

    Sometimes we should just stop to hear ourselves talk about this “social” stuff….

  29. rubu

    February 21st, 2008 at 5:45 am

    Anything that reduces the clutter is a very good thing - just hope people don’t get too over zealous about ignoring apps, some a still really really cool and the best is yet to come.

  30. linebloo

    February 21st, 2008 at 6:03 am

    http://www. i - guide .ro
    The just say no picture is fu****g funny

  31. Wes Mahler

    February 21st, 2008 at 6:56 am

    Lol, “I also have my own method for dealing with it - by removing friends who get too spammy.” You don’t really do that do you? Lol

  32. Emil

    February 21st, 2008 at 7:05 am

    @Blake Shannon
    Actually, that group have already grown to 651,311 by now.. and counting.

    http://cbs.facebook.com/group.php?gid=9912127233

    —

    In my opinion the whole invite/spam issue is one of the biggest problems facebook have faced so far - and I don’t understand why they haven’t addressed it earlier! It’s going to take a long time before anyone in the current userbase will trust the invite system again, that lack of trust will properly hurt the development of new creative and innovate apps:

    If someone were to create a top notch app tomorrow that people really *wanted* to forward to all their friends, the invites wouldn’t have any special viral effect - since most people by now consider all app invites as spam..

  33. AC

    February 21st, 2008 at 10:00 am

    I didn’t see anything about forcing apps to use opt-in vs. opt-out when it comes to “mail to 30 friends” step. I hate having to always unselect the random friends it chooses for me.

  34. Perry

    February 21st, 2008 at 12:33 pm

    Ditto…but…

    Before we get too elated about FB finally being on the user side, let’s recognize this will increase the drive to app advertising placed BY FACEBOOK through the patterns they see on the network. So, goodbye to Friend Spam, hello to a ramp on FACEBOOK ad sponsored spam, utilizing their knowledge of your friend networks.

    It is a balance, and this kind of move also shifts more ad power back to FaceBook. It may have the effect of weeding out apps which can’t pay, but that is hardly a quality-driven discriminator.

  35. Ray Reggie

    February 27th, 2008 at 4:15 pm

    Yeah, I donts like spam neither.

    Just my 2 cents.

    rayreggie@nexlevelgroup.com

  36. LB

    February 27th, 2008 at 4:19 pm

    Friend spam is pretty bad. My secretary sends me a LOT of spam, but I cant fire her becasue she is so valuable.

    What is a LB to do?

  37. Al Scofield, District Manager

    February 27th, 2008 at 4:21 pm

    I love spam. It gets me off… if you know what I mean! hehehe

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