Unpleasantness again?
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Sometimes this is what I get if I try to connect with Facebook after some of my contacts on Facebook “did” something that cluttered my e-mail in box. Usually I find myself reacting only to one in ten e-mails, as each and every company out there seems to develop its own Facebook application.
Last week it was even worse….I got no unavailability message when I tried to log in. I simply weren’t getting access. Is it a glitch of my latest Firefox update maybe? No, I get the same result in IE. Is my IP blocked maybe? Possibly, as from another computer which uses another IP I get normal access. Very strange….Restarting my computer may have helped….Yes I do run anti virus software and anti trojan software and whatever…
The Banning policy of Facebook
This unpleasantness made me remember that an update on my post Happy Hotelier Banned from Facebook? was on the back burner.
I got some comments to that post.
Sean Scully a freelance writer in Philadelphia, USA, got the same treatment to his great annoyance. Unlike me he wasn’t re instated apparently.
The reverent Huffington post’s Ann Handley noticed Sean’s rant as as well as a similar rant from Harry Joiner of Marketing Headhunter who uploaded 4.600 contacts of his gmail addressbook (so invited by Facebook) with as a consequence a permanent ban without any warning.
You can find many similar rants between their comments.
When you Google on “Your account has been disabled by an administrator. Please contact disabled@facebook.com from your login email for more information” you get even more input on the subject from other Bloggers who got the same experience.
One of the funniest I think is this one: Faceless Book
So the conclusion is that you not only must not send the same text when you invite some friends. You also mustn’t invite too many friends at once.
Access denied to Facebook
The opposite of being banned by Facebook is being denied access to Facebook that many employees seem to encounter. The UK Telegraph names a few City Firms that ban employees from sites as Facebook: Credit Suisse and Dresdner Kleinwort , The Metropolitan Police, British Gas and Lloyds TSB.
According to the Blog Facebook Observer the latest news here is that many people in Iran are not able to get access to it.
Fatigue
Wisdump wrote about it.
Any human with the slightest sense of ratio will rather quickly be bored of (super)poking, foodfight and many similar applications. Sure, poking can be fun, but only for a rather short period of time.
I should have been warned for Facebook already: Esme at Pajama Entrepreneur did that in her post Why I’m not falling for the Facehook Hype…Curiously each of her posts has a button “share on Facebook”…
Esme pointed me to a post of Giga OM about Facebook Fatigue. His approach is this: If you want to connect you don’t want to attend a mega dance party where you cannot talk. Look in your mobile phone addresses: Those are the people you want to connect with. Whatever the people behind Facebook want to acchieve, ultimately they will find out that the hordes will move on from Facebook to another place where there are no masses already taking up all your time.
So, Why am I still on Facebook?
The reason is this: I managed to re establish an old contact with a distant cousin who I met 8 years ago when he lived in South Africa. Subsequently he moved to the UK and I lost contact, because I only had an e-mail address of him and several computers later I had lost it. Through Facebook we were able to re establish contact and he actually visited us traveling through The Netherlands and visiting various family members, because he is on the verge of going back to living in South Africa again. So that is a little plus for Facebook. I will hang in for some more time.
Is Fastpitch Networking an alternative?
If you look at their features as compared to Facebook, LinkedIn and Xing, you might say “Yes”, but for the moment I fear I will stay away from another time consuming experience. What is your take?