I’ve been on Facebook for about a year now and in the whole time I’ve managed to ignore requests for installing applications. Bob has just bitten you and made you a vampire. Click here to install Vampires and start biting chumps. Carol has just become a werewolf. Become a werewolf too.
At least once a day I get requests for hotness calculators, porn names, which pet are you, which child star are you, how compatible are we, what star sign are you, the list goes on and on and on and on.
I click on ignore for all of them.
Except this morning I got this request from a friend who has recently joined Facebook.
Just in case the picture doesn’t come through, the request is worded:
Cheryl, I just added you as My Best Friend and would like you to add me to your best friends list as well. I will be notified if you choose to ignore this request.
I will be notified if you choose to ignore this request? That is the dirtiest form of marketing I can think of, it’s almost a form of blackmail - if you don’t install our application, we’re going to tell your best friend that you are ignoring them. And I bet it’s working for them, judging from the alerts I’m getting as other friends also install the application.
It it wasn’t so dirty, it would actually be quite clever as they are capitalising on the fear that our friends don’t actually like us as much as we’d like to think. So if I choose to ignore this request from my friend (who incidently is one of my best friends), she will get a notification saying “Cheryl has decided that you are not her best friend and did not add you to her list”.
It’s funny as I’m actually quite torn about adding this app - I really really don’t want to due to their marketing, but at the same time I don’t want my online-unsavvy friend to get a notice that I am ignoring her request.
The trials and tribulations of being the wired generation! Our parents had it easy.
This post is tagged under: Marketing, facebook, random thoughts, spam, transparency
[...] Molt:n Core wrote an interesting post today on Facebook apps get insidiousHere’s a quick excerptExcept this morning I got this request from a friend who has recently joined Facebook….I’ve been on Facebook for about a year now and in the whole time I’ve managed to ignore requests for installing applications…. [...]
My Facebook game has become “collecting requests”. Don’t click ignore, don’t even interact. Just let them sit there and pile up. Truly ignore them.
Ben - I’d love to but I can’t. It’s a neatness thing, the same way I hate having emails in my inbox, I can’t stand having notices up the top right hand side saying I have requests. I just want to clean them up and get rid of them.
I guess in the same way I have to throw out junk mail from our letterbox, even though our neighbours let it pile up. It drives me crazy.