Forced Invites and Unwelcome Communications

A recent post on the Facebook Developer’s Blog tells us:

…as part of our ongoing efforts to improve Platform through policy and technology changes, applications are prohibited from dead-ending users at an invite-friends page, and must never again prompt for invites after the user has declined. … please be aware of the reach of your application to those who haven’t sought it out. While we embrace the diversity of tastes expressed by apps, content sent through Facebook’s API communication channels may be encountered by people who don’t share your application’s sensibilities or are otherwise unsuited to it.

I have to tell you I am excited. I’m a Facebook developer, but before that I’m a Facebook user. I’m a pretty “bare bones” user too. I use only a handful of applications, mostly those created by the Facebook staff, and that’s about it. I’ll try some of the other ones if many of my friends are but ONLY if I think that it’s going to somehow make my life better.

It seems that once the platform opened up I became bombarded with requests from friends (ultimately developers using my friends as lackeys) to “join them” on some fantastic application. Promises of “pokes” and “pinches” and “tickles”; special presents that I could ONLY see if I also joined this stupid application. Dozens of times I fell for it. I saw the stupid picture of the stupid bear; or played the stupid horribly written game of poker; or joined the dark side as a vampire. Immediately after I uninstalled and wished I had that minute and a half of my life back.

Eventually things became so bad that I couldn’t even SEE what “things my friends say about me” until I too invited no less than 10 of my friends. No WONDER I got so many stupid invites! The application seemed to be about no more than spreading itself about the Facebook realm like a virus and not about adding value to my Facebook experience.

So I quit installing anything. I would ignore DOZENS of “invites” every day, only to have to do it all over again. I quit being friends with some of my real friends because they sent me SO MUCH CRAP. It was spam pure and simple. It took me years to convince my family that there was no free trip to Disneyland if they forwarded that email enough. This is no different and no less annoying.

But Facebook has stepped in. They’re doing something about it and I THANK them. Facebook still has the power and ability to govern their realm. But this has gotten me thinking about my next big step into the social network scene; OpenSocial.

Open. Open Social. Who is going to stop the mountains of internal spam that will just as likely flourish? With no “central government” to watch out for the citizens who is going to stop the floods? I am a very big fan of open things and no less about this open network. I really like Facebook but sometimes the “walled garden” aspect just doesn’t sit well with me. But perhaps I’m beginning to see some benefits.