When I joined a social network, my life changed. Suddenly everyone wanted to be my friend. Hey, this is great, right? Even people I don't even know want to be my friend. They really see me as a shining light. Well, maybe ...
According to a recent eMarketer article, 80% of SN users report receiving unwanted invitations to become friends. Many of these come from self-important individuals who compete over the number of friends in their network. I've run across several in Linked In who have more than 5,000 ... close friends, I'll bet. But many come from people who are building marketing lists to send unwanted advertising messages, or worse, from people who are trying to lure unsuspecting "friends" into revealing personal information on linked websites.
The largest social networking services - Facebook, MySpace and Linked In - reportedly are taking steps to try to manage this. Two-thirds of the respondents in this research said that they would consider switching social networks if the levels of spam and unwanted invites got to be too much.
Private social networks set up by companies and non-profits are generally easier to police simply because there are far fewer users. However, the same dynamics may be at work, especially as a successful site starts to grow at a rapid pace. The question is, what can be done about it?
