I received this FaceBook invite to a webinar from Chris Abraham of AbrahamHarrison and Jay Jaffe of Jaffe Associates.
This invite was sent to over 2,200 people on FaceBook. Seems like kind of spammy behaviour to me!
Ironically the webinar is on “how to look after your online reputation and why it is important to do so”.
I guess they did this for the “What NOT to do” part of the webinar!
I suppose I received the invite because I chose to accept a Friend request from Chris Abraham back in 2007. This is not the first invite I have received from Chris since then (far from it). The dangers not being selective enough with who you friend on FaceBook, eh?
Dear FaceBook, please put an UnFriend link on invites like this so that with a single click I can insure I don’t receive any more,
Thanks,
Tom.
Why is this spam? He must have thought that as one of his friends you might be interested in attending the webinar. Facebook does allow you to unfriend people very easily. I get tons of lil green patch requests, mob wars, etc. I just ignore them or remove them.
Opt-in lists (and facebook is an opt-in list) are by definition not spam. You can always choose to opt-out.
If one person thinks its spam, it’s spam. You can call it whatever you want, opt-in advertising junk, opt-in special love $5 dollar. Whatever. It is spam.
(And as Tom points out the invite is for “look after your online reputation” which is exactly what the invite has corrupted; Chris Abraham’s online reputation.)
Doesn’t spam have to be both unsolicited and bulk? I think that blindly accepting Facebook friend requests removes the unsolicited from the equation. At the very least you can always look someone up and investigate what their angle may be in adding you.
I’ve foolishly added random friends and then received messages selling me books and web marketing kits. Some of them constantly send me invites to the weekend club parties happening. I consider those examples far closer to spam AND far more deserving of being called out than I would Chris’ webinar.
Calling someone out in the ‘blogosphere’ is awesome when warranted, but it’s the crier’s black eye when the complaint isn’t substantial or fleshed out with even basic research. It’s a harsher than spam to call someone out personally in an unsolicited and bulk manner, is it not?
Given that you can choose to delete the post without reading it– and I delete a number of posts on facebook that I can TELL from the headline I don’t want to read, it’s totally your choice to read it or not.
I happened to be listen- and learn — something from the last webinar last week and I passed it on to clients.. in fact I am printing out parts to give them to read because they *NEED* to read it.
I totally understand your feeling of spamming but if I had something going on that I was providing 411 for FREE in terms of a seminar and the person didn’t have to leave their desk, I would be all for it.
I am not saying you aren’t entitled to your opinion– just that there are a number of people on Chris Abraham’s list who would and do want to hear this stuff . Getting someone to understand HOW to protect their brand is hugely important and a relevant one based on one of my current clients
Spam is in the eye of the beholder. Male phallic enlargement emails may be a god send to some and a PITA to others. Chris could have vetted his recipient list better.
I keep on trying to post my own comment! Why doesn’t it post?
I am always happy to receive email from you and blog posts. I have almost 4,000 friends on Facebook, so inviting my friends to my events doesn’t seem like spam at all to me. In Facebook, you cannot actually invite anyone who is not explicitly connected to you. So, this month, I am offering a series of 3 free webinars — for free, mind you — that I would love my friends to attend. Am I being aggressive? Well, yes; however, over 340 folks registered to attend my last Twitter for Business webinar, so I don’t think it is much of a problem. I am sorry to have lost you as a friend, but I am happy to be blogged about, even in this situation, because I know for a fact that when you’re connected via Facebook, it is surely a double-opt-in situation where I am surely allowed to message my Facebook friends, especially if it is to invite them to something for free that could actually save them a lot of money and a lot of trouble. Thanks for emailing me and giving me a heads-up for this article — I appreciate it!
Paul,
“An electronic message is ‘spam’ IF: (1) the recipient’s personal identity and context are irrelevant because the message is equally applicable to many other potential recipients; AND (2) the recipient has not verifiably granted deliberate, explicit, and still-revocable permission for it to be sent.” –Spamhaus http://www.spamhaus.org/definition.html
Facebook is an opt-in messaging system with an explicit opt-in and easy method of revoking that opt-in. Spam isn’t spam just because someone says so, “spam” is a clearly defined term.
Alan, I didn’t and don’t “blindly accept FaceBook friend requests” – I always look to see who I am accepting the request from, if I don’t know them, do we have friends in common, if so, who are they? Just yesterday, I declined to follow someone because thy were pimping an unscrupulous, spamming, Irish hosting company.
I agree it is harsh to call someone out if undeserved but what makes you think my complaint isn’t substantial or that I didn’t do basic research?
Stevie, you are absolutely correct to say that:
“Getting someone to understand HOW to protect their brand is hugely important”
– I think Chris and Jay should be more protective of their brands by not spamming people on FaceBook
I wonder why my comments don’t run through 🙁
They were stuck in my Akismet queue Chris, apologies.
Published now.
@ Tom – Accepting a friend request in facebook comes along with full authority to message, connect, share etc. If you choose to accept someone as friend, you did choose to receive messages from that person. So in short if a certain message offends you just let your friend know about it in person.
Forget about all opt-ins or double opt-ins…Facebook doesn’t work like that…it’s a network of people with whom you can share. If you don’t like sharing your stuff or their stuff then more caution should be exercised while accepting friends.
By bringing it to your blog – What point were you trying to make? This do not affect any individual’s reputation (if you thought so). People out there understand what’s SPAM and what’s not.
Though everyone is entitled to their opinion and according to my opinion this way of throwing it in public doesn’t solve your objective.
Having long ago lost any reputation I might have had, protection of same either online or offline, would be as pointless and useless for me as those penile extension spams….
That’s the reason I stopped login in to facebook,It begins with nice friend adding, chatting, viewing pictures, then thos mass application requests and harrasements, and then you begin getting your “inbox” in facebook and also email blasted with so called “invitation”. Thats the problems of success and greed.
Hi Tom
You were on the friends’ list of Chris, the webinar was related to online branding, and you blog about social media, so how come the invite was a spam? I am sorry Tom you it wrong here. If you were writing on UFOs and you got the invite for this webinar, yes it was a spam but in the present circumstances it is not.
In any case this particular post has given me excellent material for a case study which I will take up with Dave Evans whose workshop on social media marketing I am going to attend this month in India. Considering the fact that he is an expert, his insights should give throw some interesting facts.
If you want to say some nice words to your friends, then it’s not a spam, though, it seems something like that
I find that twitter bombards my DM inbox much more than facebook. The amount of mafia wars requests is just baffling to me, especially when I check out someone’s profile who sent the request and they seem to be someone offering value.
This is actually one of the main advantages I see that facebook has over twitter. The relationships are much more substantial and the spammy forms of communication are not as socially accepted.
I honestly don’t mind getting one invite to a webinar, but when I get 5 within a day, it gets pretty irritating. It can be a fine line between good marketing and annoying people, that’s for sure.
I wouldn’t mind receiving such an invite as I am interested in social media marketing as well and actually working on it. But then again, that’s me. What I wouldn’t want are those sales letters that I get in my inbox. Now that’s spam!
I feel the same as you with some of my contact in facebook. Great example!
Great idea with the “unfriend: link…
4000 friends on facebook? yikes. Leads me to wonder what conversion rate you really get through this kind of facebook activity, and at what cost? The dilution of your online connection with real friends and acquaintances comes to mind.
It seems that there is a lot of argument that if you send a mass message to your “friends”, it’s not spam. But isn’t it just spamming your friends?
I don’t think it is spam. Either you have given them permission by friending them, or joining a common group. Someone commented that if someone thinks its spam then it is. This is completely not true. You need to take responsibility for the people you friend and groups you join. Either way, you can write to the people sending the invite and kindly tell them your opinion.
I feel that whenever any social networking media begins, spam immediately starts to take over. It is always going to happen. Unfortunately that is just how it is. Thank-you for the post.
Just another reason why I don’t use facebook with any regularity.
Lol, over 2000 invitations- almost imossible to do it manually
I agree with some of the comments on here about it being your responsibility to ensure the friend you have chosen to accept is actually some you know or is in fact your friend.
As a friend, I often send stuff to my friends but I do get the occasional invite to something which I don’t like or not interested in, which sometimes annoys me. If a friend said something wrong, you’ll either tell them or just “de-friend” them so problem solved.
Just my opinion.
Hahaha ;D it’s funny. Seriously 😀