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Could social media experience a spam like phenomenon similar to email?
As businesses increase the usage of social media to communicate with consumers, does anyone see believe social media could become a platform for a new type of "spam" similar to what happened with email?
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10 Answers
I think it can, and I also think that it's already started to happen on certain platforms.
On different social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace its easy to see when particular profiles have been phished and are spitting out spam-type comments and messages. Generally the comments are not B2B related, but they are seen by the profile owner & their connections. I've seen a couple of different types of spam on Twitter as well. It is hard to explain the type of spam, but it is there and will continue to grow as the network does.
The more social media becomes an integral part of the marketing process, the more we will see people take advantage of the benefits and find ways to spam users. Its unfortunate because legitimate organizations with honest marketing campaigns will see a reduced effectiveness as people grow more, "immune," to these types of spam.
As Caty said about Facebook and Myspace, it's happened also in LinkedIn groups. Users were pounded by their group's weekly, even daily emails of updates of discussions and news. And now the views on those discussions and news are a fraction of what they were just a few short months ago. That golden goose is on life support.
I hope so.
In all seriousness, yes. It's called Twitter.
Yes. Social media will become platform for "SociaSPAM".
Then can social media be view as an effective marketing tool? Even with a hyper-targeted social media marketing strategy, will a business not have their message drowned out by the rest of the "noise
I think it's definitely starting to show signs of spam-like behavior, but at the same time I think social networking hit a real nerve in the marketplace, and brought into the fold a whole new group of users (the 50+ crowd). I think people will find ways to cope or avoid the negative elements for now. Given the popularity of social networking there will be a bunch of smart people introducing new tools and applications to combat abuse (much like virus scans, email filters and pop-up blockers did for us in email and browsing). Social Networking is too big of a wave to be stopped.
From my experience, absolutely! While it's always risky to extrapolate from a "focus group of one," my own experience so far has been that the "spam risk factor" comes from the almost incessant emails from the groups to which I belong. From that perspective, I suppose it's mostly a self-inflicted wound, and I've learned to avoid the temptation to receive email updates from my groups/friends/whatevers because they simply clutter up my inbox with stuff I'll never read. I agree with Michael Thimmesch's post that all you need to do is look at the number of discussions with zero comments to sense that most of us are simply becoming numbed by the sheer volume of mostly low-value group messages.
Ian,
Yes, certainly, it's called "seed questioning", "chatting among yourselves", "promotional responses", and "for our clients we do" -- just check out the profiles of people posting, most responses are self serving. It's always going to be that way.
Sincerely,
Justin Hitt
B2B Sales Marketing Advisor
http://HittPublishingDirect.com/
When I see Super Bowl Ads and prime time television Ads that have the company urging viewers to "follow us on Twitter/Facebook..." I know that the Social Media networks are now being "farmed for revenue" and the spam will only grow from here.
The good news is, at least the end user can control the amount they receive in their inbox.
From our perspective, I think the Social Networks can still be effective, we will just have to use good judgement. Gone are the days of "select all" broadcast messages. We will have to make sure that we have a specific, targeted message that our audience will at least spend 3 seconds opening, and not abuse those connections.
It will become like our own personal, RL networks. If people think we're only interested in them for "the next sale", they won't keep us on their RL network, so why should we expect them to keep us on their virtual one?
lol RT: @Brian Provost In all seriousness, yes. It's called Twitter.
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