Facebook = Social Media Spam AKA The New MySpace

I used to really like Facebook. Now I'm starting to see it more like just this random clutter. Literally, it's spam from your "friends."

Over the weekend I've gotten Fan Suggestions, Event & Group Invites to things like:

Vote for X at X High School
Can I have your phone numbers?
Have Jason Derulo come to my high school!!!!
Run for BU Student Office
Buy my condo!!!!
Qdoba Boston
New Product Survey
Please take my survey!
Some dumb politician
Become a fan of people who hate becoming fans of random events
Talking on the cellphone while on video chat!!!!!
ETC

You get my drift. About 98% of these don't interest me at all. I don't go to your high school. You didn't have my number in the first place, why would I give it to you now? I can't run for student elections, I'm a senior.

It's become such blind spam. Invite everyone you know, even if it doesn't relate to them at all. Invite your friends who are studying abroad to a birthday party next weekend in Boston. Heads up: they're not coming.

My biggest question is: why? Why invite me to an event that doesn't relate? I'm not coming to the sorority hottest man on campus event. I understand that it's a way of spreading the word about events, but wouldn't it be best to target your audience to people you know are interested and actually want to come? Put some effort and say "Yeah, Pat probably wouldn't want to come to the hottest men event, but instead my friend Jane likes men, I'll invite her." Wow! What brilliant thinking!

Or I have a better one. For BU's 100 days party, everyone was invited who was friends with the creators. Nothing against them, but it's supposed to be a seniors-only event. Don't invite juniors or people who have already graduated. That defeats the purpose of not only the event but also the invite. Or the 50 Day Party - It's called 50 days until graduation. I checked on the invite, people were invited that aren't seniors. STUPID.

My favorite funny thing is people who click not attending and then write on the wall "Sorry guys I can't make it!" Thanks for the update!

But then regarding the Fan pages. Why do I need to be a fan of Qdoba Boston? I eat there sparingly. Don't tell me to become a fan. By inviting me to become a fan of a politician, your essentially telling me your political views, and that I should follow them. Don't shove it down my throat. Let me have my own politics. That's also why I hate politics. I don't care at all about health care reform, but everyone's going nuts.

The worst thing about it, is that I'm being spammed by people who are my "friends." I can actually go through and see who sent it to me. And I scratch my head and say, 'why would I be invited to attend the bake sale?' And honestly the invite is from people who are just that - "friends" - not really my friends, just people who I'm "friends" with. They're basically using me to get a higher number of responses for their event. I'm being used by people who are my "friends."

I guess I'm being cynical. They got my attention. That was the goal. I would think for 98% of the events/groups/fan pages, they don't actually get me to join. But now I'm skeptical about everything I'm invited to that is outside of my close group of friends. I'm not going to reward my "friend" who hit "invite all friends" to this page unless I really believe in the event. It takes no effort. It's impersonal. It's rude. If there was a way they could send a message along with it, a "Hey, this is so-and-so and it means alot to me if you became a fan of it because of X" then maybe I'd consider. But I don't even know what half the things I'm invited to are because no one explains them. I have no clue what TEDx at BU is, so how can I justify going? And I looked through trying to figure it out, and just got frustrated because nowhere does it tell me what exactly TED stands for. I need more than a broad, stock explanation of "changing the world ideas" - tell me more than that. Convince me that I should come and why I should care.

It reminds me of MySpace, which was cool when it first started in 2003, but it quickly became too much, for me anyway. I understand the power it has for musicians. But outside of that, I really see it as another case of spam. Fake accounts, making your page so random that you can't navigate it, it's obnoxious. So I got out of MySpace, as many people did, and switched to Facebook. It was cooler, at that time it was more exclusive, and it was more of a controlled environment. Remember when your wall was at the bottom right corner of your page, instead of the focal point of your entire profile? What a revolutionary concept.

Maybe it's our own fault. We all friend people we aren't really friends with to begin with. The people I was friends with freshman year aren't necessarily my friends today, but according to Facebook we are. Or I'm friends with my friends' friends who I've never met. I'm really considering going through and de-friending people I don't speak to, or people who I've never spoken to, or don't speak to anymore. What's the point? So we can mutually see pictures of each other? Do I really care what my freshman year floormates are doing? So they can randomly invite me to "Need phone #s please!" ? Maybe they can see that I'm single?

Part of the blame has to be on the people creating these pages however. Everyone says that their company needs to get on Facebook/Twitter/The next big thing - but to spam me? That's not how the game is supposed to work. I'm supposed to find them, after they generate good enough content worth my time to view it and become a fan. Not just to become a fan of a random company like a Qdoba Boston without telling me why. How many groups and pages are you a fan of where you have no participation in the group? Then what's the point? I can't say I'm not guilty of that too, but the system is flawed.

I still like Facebook. I like keeping in touch with friends that aren't in Boston. It's still fun, but I get easily annoyed by people who don't really know me or care what I think.

AS I TYPE THIS I GOT INVITED TO: BECOME A FAN OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY 2010 COMMENCEMENT. NO. PURELY BECAUSE IT'S SPAM. IT'S ALL SPAM.

Sorry for yelling, does anyone else feel my pain?

PleaseDontRobMe.Com

The past few weeks I've gotten messages from a few of my friends (and my mother) regarding the advent of PleaseRobMe.com - the site that tracks you're FourSquare check-ins. If you know me, you know that I'm pretty into FourSquare - I LOVE the potential it has and I think that it really is the next big thing - if people and companies can understand that it's more than just "letting people know where you are."

Anyways, the premise of PleaseRobMe.com is a live feed of when people check into places and therefore they aren't home. I'm not buying it. For several reasons. One, they only list the 15 latest updates. The chances of you being listed as one of the most recent 15 is low. Last I checked, FourSquare has about 275,000 members. So 15 in 275,000. L-O-W. If you stay on the feed you'll get everyone's updates eventually.

So even if you were to come up on the feed, someone would have to be in your area, and then have to know where you live. The chances of all that adding up seems too low for me. The only people who could rob you would be your friends, and they still have to get into your building (pending apartment) and then into your room. It doesn't seem very logical.

I'm personally not concerned about it. I think it's meant to scare people. People like to panic. For some, it has caused that panic. For the people that understand and can utilize the technology, it's nothing more than another website that will fade away.

Google isn't Buzzing

Yesterday GoogleBuzz came into my life, and 24 hours later I'm ready to say goodbye. Unceremoniously.

If you asked me a month ago I would have said Google is primed to take over the world. I even mentioned it in my post yesterday regarding their great Super Bowl ad - that was before I played with Buzz and really had time to think about the company. Now, I really think that Google still has that potential - but Google is too all over the place to succeed right now.

My problem with GoogleBuzz is the fact that I don't REALLY use GMail. I have a GMail account, but all my mail goes to my BlackBerry/Mail Client. Whenever I actually log on GMail, it's a mess because it doesn't seem to sync up. So given that alone, I NEVER want to go to the GMail site. But to use Buzz I would have to see it every day. Plus everything that's "Buzzed" is already sent to my e-mail (aka Blackberry/Mail) - making my GMail even more cluttered than before.

The Internet is creating TOO many outlets for us to sign up for. I could probably think of 20 things I've signed up for in the past five years where I have to connect with "friends". Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube, AIM, Skype, BBM (okay so not an Internet, but same deal,) Foursquare, Xbox/PSN/Wii, Netflix, any type of message board, etc. I think I proved my point. So my question is why would I want to add GMail/G-Chat do that ever-growing list?

I understand their intended goal - to clear the clutter. I'm just not sure that it quite accomplishes that task. Maybe it's because I've organized my TweetDeck well enough that I feel like I've already done it for Twitter, I'm alright with my Facebook (although the new layout is a struggle,) and I'm able to talk to my contacts on AIM/BBM. I feel relatively organized and less cluttered than usual. If anything, by getting e-mails on everything my "G-Friends" are "buzzing" about, it really clutters my inbox.

I think Google's goal is to somewhat brainwash us into using everything Google. Google Mail. Google Chat. Google Buzz. Google Reader. Google Cereal. Okay so that last one was a joke, but if they had it, we would probably eat it up - pun intended.

I'm not saying that Google Buzz sucks. I just think it needs some fine-tuning. If it came out 3-4 years ago - before Twitter, before Facebook blew up, they would of been onto something. By implementing it now, it feels more like an RSS feed of your friend updates - which are the same as Twitter, without the 140 character limit. I'm just not sure it's necessary.

Google really still has so much potential but needs better execution. Google Wave seems to be a flop - nobody can figure out how the hell to use it, and they don't have enough friends to create Waves with. I recently just bought my own web domain from Google, but can't figure out how to set that up either - although most of that is probably because I'm not very HTML savvy. Google has all these great things that no one really knows how to use. They recently announced a plan to launch it's own ISP. They've talked about Google Voice for a bit - something else that at least I know I can't personally figure out. AdWords. There's a bunch out there.

I used to really like Google, and most of the time I still do, but I really think there are times when they hide behind the "don't be evil" mantra to reveal that they actually are "evil" in terms of trying to take over everyone else. There's definitely a "war" brewing between Google and Facebook. Everyone is afraid of Google. Apple, Blackberry, and Facebook all have tried to implement using Bing rather than Google because Google is threatening to take over their respective mediums - why support the 'enemy'. Suddenly Microsoft isn't the big bad 5,000-pound gorilla anymore. Who would of ever seen that coming?

Google can still do it. They can fix Buzz. I've heard great things about Wave, but no one I personally know either knows about it or can use it. Maybe because of Buzz we will start to see a transition to using their website as the home base for all our browsing/social needs. They just need to re-calibrate their vision to be more cohesive and work with us instead of rolling out new programs every few months.

I'm Really Excited About Foursquare

It's hard to stay ahead of the social media curve. Twitter exploded before anyone knew how to really use it. It's still evolving - daily. A lot of social media "experts" believe that the next big thing is going to be Foursquare, and I really hope they are right.

The concept behind Foursquare is simple - it's a location tool. People can "check-in" to places (typically bars and restaurants, but the possibilities are literally endless.) So for example, I can check in to the local Cheesecake Factory, and my friends can check and see that I am there. They may be nearby so we can meet up, or they may want to join. It's a way to connect. In such big cities, I could be at a bar and two doors down is a friend of mine. If we checked in, we would know how close we were to each other and get together. You can share the message through Twitter and Facebook to reach further out to your network.

There are two other exciting things about Foursquare. First, you can add tips for each place to tell other people about. Say you really enjoy the new coffee from Starbucks, you can share that with everyone and recommend it to other people who will be checking in. The other potential for Foursquare is the points system. Users get points for checking-in and become mayors of places if they have the most points. We're starting to see some restaurants reward people who check in - because they are promoting the restaurant. It can build a customer loyalty that we haven't seen before - and extend it into the social realm.

I was one of the 5,000 to receive the Beta Foursquare for BlackBerry application and cannot wait for it to be released publicly. Once it is public I believe it will really take off because BlackBerry's are so popular. Right now it has iPhone and Android support, but by adding BlackBerry application it opens up to a VERY large audience who has been known to be addicted (they're called CrackBerry's for a reason.)

I really see the potential for this new tool and really hope it succeeds, because it can really allow for users to meet and share on a different level than you can get from Twitter and Facebook.