by Howard Greenstein
April 3, 2008 at 4:07 am
· Filed under Marketing and Relationships, Supernova08
Familiar title, no? How many times in the recent past have you received something like this on a social network service? “Forward this and see who looks at your profile the most!” “Forward this and a cute dog will wink at you.” Enough, please.
This is the note I sent to a friend today.
Friend:
Could you please go easy on the Funwall “forward this to see what happens” messages?
I seem to get them from several people at a time, and they take up my inbox and my time for not-such-a-great payoff. I value our connection and our communication, but these mass “forward this” mails are a bit too much. I’m considering removing apps that do this “mass forward” thing. Nothing personal to you - it’s just the way they’re set up.
What I hope my friend will realize from this note is that I do value our communication. And, that I believe there’s a place for forwarding fun viral items. But every network has someone who has done this just a few too many times and, while they may not realize it, it reduces the value of their other communications. The challenges of our network world include over-communicating, and the ease of ‘forwarding’ anything can add to the clutter, and reduce the signal of any form of communication.
It is like the story of the boy who cried “Wolf!” too many times. Emails from “that person who always forwards the forward-this mails” may get ignored. And that’s not useful for that person’s business or their personal brand.
Etiquette tip for social networks - before you forward that “forward this” message consider whether it needs to go to everyone on your list, or just a few people who you know will smile. Forward different things to different friends, and it is a valuable ‘touch’ to keep connected, and not an annoyance.
By the way, feel free to forward this blog post to everyone you know.
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[...] My post today at the Conversation Hub » Familiar title, no? How many times in the recent past have you received something like this on a social network service? “Forward this and see who looks at your profile the most!” “Forward this and a cute dog will wink at you.” Enough, please.(read more of Forward this…and see what happens) [...]
Do these particular applications automatically spam everyone in your facebook acquaintance? I’m always afraid to click because I believe they do. It may be that your friend doesn’t know she’s sending the messages to you. While some applications give you the choice of who to forward something to, others may just automatically forward to everybody - which is why I never click them if I’ve seen spammy behavior coming from the app.
The default has been to forward to ‘all friends.’ But it is easy to click ‘unselect all’. The friend was glad to learn of this choice.
Lately when I’ve gotten these things, I’ve unselected all and forwarded it right back to the person to get the ‘payoff.’
Yes, these do indeed auto-forward in many instances. Your friends aren’t sending you cute-but-annoying forwards (you’ll notice that when you do the ‘forward’ NOTHING happens, so why oh why WOULD your friends send them to you, unless they were tricked), but falling for the same thing you are when you click on them to see what happens. Think about this from the programmatic standpoint. HOW would anything happen when you click that forward button? If you were coding some crappy little winking dog, assuming this functionality was possible, wouldn’t you trigger it on a mouseover, or a click, or place another button next to the dog, rather than trying to piggyback your function on a button that already HAS its own function(which if I am right, facebook doesn’t allow)? Doesn’t make sense, doesn’t work, and has scripted generic text for a message/caption? Sounds like viral crap to me. Go check out some of your friends’ Superwalls or Funwalls…YOU may be that annoying friend and not even know it. The question remains, WHY? No money is made, no information apparently collected…just like some annoying spammers, they spam for the sake of having their “creation” show up on a huge number of pages, then they feel REALLY good about themselves later. Oh well, do yourself and your facebook friends a favor, and delete this junk when it hits your wall.
Thanks for the comment, Ben. Actually, one supposedly did show me “who looked at my profile the most” but I believe it was just a picture of a random one of my friends. I delete all of these.
I believe some of these are also intended to get ad impressions on a second page.
[...] The BBC has been able set up a malicious application that can steal details of not only your information but the people you’re connected with. This is because in Facebook, applications have permission to ‘walk the tree’ of your friend contact details, letting the apps do things like populate the list of people for you to forward to, when you choose to “forward this and see what happens.” [...]
[...] The hacker in this case has been able set up a malicious application that can steal details of not only your information but the people you’re connected with. This is because in Facebook, applications have permission to ‘walk the tree’ of your friend contact details, letting the apps do things like populate the list of people for you to forward to, when you choose to “forward this and see what happens.” We have discovered a way to steal the personal details of you and all your Facebook friends without you knowing. [...]
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