Who Else Is Sick of Social Network Spam?
By Anna Johnson on April 24th, 2009If you’re sick of receiving all those messages inviting you to join this or that social network… or, if you’re already a member of a social network, all those messages to join this or that online group, or to try this or that application… you’re not alone.
Research in the United Kingdom by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) shows that 31 percent of people who have joined social networks are unhappy with ‘social spam’ – requests to try new applications or invitations to join online groups.
I imagine that the percentage of general Internet users who are tired of receiving invitations to join social networks is as high (if not much higher).
All this social network spam is a real put-off and, if anything, creates barriers to what should otherwise be an enjoyable and rewarding experience. Having said that, many social networks give users control over what kind of alerts they receive from other social network users. So if you don’t want to receive an alert… make sure you configure your profile accordingly.
On the other hand, there’s not much you can do about people you don’t know who send you invitations to join a social network. That’s just spam.
Unfortunately for the social networks the level of this kind of spam is getting so high that spam filters may start automatically marking social network emails as spam (if they’re not doing so already).
Once again, what is an essentially a good idea – i.e. to easily send invitations, updates or alerts to friends and colleagues – has been abused by people whose main objective is to benefit themselves at the expense of others. And while it pains me to say this, it doesn’t take much to see that rogue elements within the Internet marketing community are some of those responsible for this abuse…
Source: Helen Leggatt, “IAB: Social spam turns off social networkers,” BizReport, April 21, 2009
