Why would I want to be friends with a corporation?
Sentry Parental Controls has just asked to be my Facebook friend. And this irritates me.
I don’t add people I haven’t actually met, and I don’t know Sentry from the Horseguards, so the answer’s a big fat finger on the ‘ignore’ button. But I’m annoyed that they would just send a friend request, to me in my personal space, without so much as an additional message explaining anything about them or why they might be relevant to me.
Sentry are friend-spammers.
I’ve no problem with marketing, but they’ve got completely the wrong strategy here. I haven’t heard of them before, but my first contact with them has been negative, so it’s likely that my first contact will be my last.
Why would I want to be friends with a corporation? Can’t think of many reasons, although Macfans will be able to tell you, but I bet an iPod lover’s relationship with Apple started small and personal and on the buyers terms and subsequently grew into something more meaningful. Like real friendships in fact.
Or is this the way digital relationships happen now? I hope not.
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ALL I CAN SAY IS, ‘TAKE A SECOND LOOK BEFORE YOU CLICK ON ANYTHING’ ON FACEBOOK.
I don’t think Sentry Parental Controls was at all innocent. But not long ago, I was.
I was playing around with Facebook, having almost no idea of what I was doing, and clicked on something that seemed interesting. After that, Facebook went into my Gmail address book and sent “be my friend” notices to everybody in there – ON MY BEHALF.
I know this seems odd but a lot people in my Gmail address book don’t know me. For example, I had spent some time harvesting contact information for public relations, marketing, sales, and advertising people at the London Stock Exchange. I have some good contacts there, in connection with my financial writing. But I wanted some “backup” connections to use in case I had a breaking story and my regular contact was on holiday, fired, drunk, being held for ransom by the Cornwall Independence Movement, whatever — you know, unavailable.
Well, I got a number of “I don’t even know you” messages back from lovely ladies at the London Stock Exchange who, I suspect, now believe me to be some kind of stalker. Oddly, in the process. Facebook, probably without THEIR knowledge, attached some rather intriguing party pictures of them to their “I don’t even know you” messages. And I must say, uh, well …
Anyway, I wasn’t trying to electronically stalk them. I’m afraid to go back to them and explain my innocence. I have deleted MOST of those pictures from my hard drive.
BEWARE FACEBOOK! It is a tricky little gremlin.
REG CROWDER
Freelance Financial and Investment Writer
London, England and Brittany, France
http://knol.google.com/k/reg-crowder/international-investing/6dyptd3yjxyq/2
REG CROWDER
24 August, 2008 at 1:31 pm