Blue Gypsy Inc. Blog

I've never used the unfriend button until the other day. I didn't get into a mortal fight with a friend, I didn't take my toys and go home...no, I was getting too much spam!

That's right spam on facebook in the form of fan page suggestions and events. But they weren't just any fanpage and events they were "How to make millions of dollars...blah blah blah." These are the websites and the emails that I delete! Why do I want it in my social media stream?

First off I'm on facebook to socialize. I'm not there to sell stuff, and I'm not there to buy stuff. I'm not there to investigate snake oil and miracle pills.

There was a point where I was very very protective of my facebook account. It was only for people I actually, physically knew in person and reality. My facebook friends were made up of historical friendships from high school and college, travel relationships with people I'd met out on the travel road through adventure or work, and kids (now adults) who I taught on sailboats.

And then as my circle began to grow locally in Virginia Beach with real estate agents and those in related businesses, social media and marketing professionals, and local friends, I began to loosen up my tight personal policy on friend requests. But still I get a little rankled when a total stranger requests my friendship without any explanation. I really do wish there was a way to enforce the idea of including a personal message when requesting a stranger's friendship on facebook. Add to that they have a tight facebook security policy so when I check who they are I can't tell a thing. Yet they are using facebook as a networking tool? #fail

Simply put, tell me why you want to be my friend! If it's for networking great! I network.

But you are very misguided if your idea of networking is to never have a personal interaction with me and use me as one more faceless number to push out your fan pages and events. That's called SPAM!

It's like walking up to someone in public and instead of introducing yourself, you simply give them flyers on the street. You have no relationship with them, no trust built with them so why should they even look at your flyer? And if it's full of big words like "Make Millions!" "Do YOU need MORE MONEY?"....well if it looks like a get rich quick scheme, and it smells like a get rich quick scheme...you do the math. And by the way, all capital letters is YELLING AT ME ON THE INTERNET!

If you took the time to know who I am you'd know the things that would interest me and thus the events I would attend and the pages I would fan, and the things that I'm not interested in.

To be honest, if you pay attention at all to what you are doing, and you are not just mechanically moving through the use of social media, you'd see you are inviting me to the same thing every day and I am declining. That should be your key indicator to STOP!

Okay so perhaps this was a bit of a rant...but tell me, am I alone in this feeling? How do you feel when someone just friend's you to send you junk?