The debate about the backlash against Facebook's moves into privacy and contextual advertising doesn't seem to end. It's a useful time for marketers and communicators to be thinking of these issues. Why? Because we tale so much for granted the fact that we could network with each other, and befriend a friend of a friend of a friend.
The problem is, when we start, even inadvertently, sending them things they don't need to know. Like ads. Or how about "pokes" and updated to other networks where we have changed our profile? Plaxo, a great concept, was a major offender in this area some time ago. It earned the term "Plaxo Spam." Facebook ought to have known it was tinkering with the underpinnings of the social graph' as they call it.
Long before online social nets, the practice of friends befriending others in grocery stores and parking lots gave a bad name to companies like Amway. We have to be careful about putting networking and targeting in the same cocktail shaker. I Googled "Amway and Facebook" and came across a brilliant quote from Robert Scoble. "I will not Amway my Facebook friends."
No one could have put it better.
Sidebar: I posted this to ValleyPRBlog. A light hearted poke at the stalking, "poking," and friending phenomenon.
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