Be careful with how you use facebook

April 30 at 11:41am
Hey Coaches!

After facebook disabled my account last month I decided to create a test account for the purpose of learning more about how sensitive facebook is when it comes to disabling accounts.

I'm surprised at how easily they are willing to disable an account and without any communication about it or any recourse. My test accounts have all been permanently disabled quite easily. My method for testing was to add ten new friends a day from relevant groups to fitness such as weight watchers groups and attraction marketing groups. Each of the ten friend requests I sent I typed in a little one sentence greeting so that I wouldnt be confused as spam. It only took a week or so for facebook to disable those accounts without cause or reason. They only give me a vague website to look at about the rules and possible reasons my account was disabled. My test account activity didnt fit any of the possible reasons they give for deleting an account. Promoting a business came close but everyone does that so I don't think that was it. The only one of the possible reasons I could see would be the one about harassing other users. Obviously I didnt harass anyone but it's likely all it took to get disabled was for one or more people to get offended that a stranger would friend request them and write a kind one sentence message introducing myself along with the friend request.

Facebook is the best social media tool for networking EASILY. But sadly they baseless disable accounts without communication or possible recourse.

So here is what I recommend each of us does... First read there reasons for disabling accounts: http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=1581

Don't add people to your facebook unless it's warranted.

Make sure you post stuff about your personal life as well as the beachbody deal. I know the two are very much intertwined so that should come easy.

Always be friendly, courteous, and respectful even if someone else is being a total jerk. Just ignore jerk faces it's part of life anyway that we are going to come across some of those :)

Don't rely just on your online efforts to bring people over into Team Beachbody. Do it offline to!

REGULARLY BACK UP YOUR FACEBOOK CONTACTS USING THE FACEBOOK IMPORTS FEATURE IN YOUR YAHOO EMAIL ACCOUNT JUST IN CASE!

The good news in all of this is that Spam just doesnt exist like it does on other social sites like myspace, friendster, twitter, and a bunch of other places. All of those other places once were VERY popular until out of control spam ruined it for everyone. I believe facebook is actually very smart in learning from those other social sites who let spam run rampid. If spam never runs rampid in facebook then Facebook will always be THEE social website to be involved in because it's friendly :-) In my opinion facebook gos to far in how they decide which accounts to disable but I'd rather have it this way than the myspace or twitter way because those sites are so over spammed it's ruined the experience.

Thank you for reading this I hope this helps you with your facebook experience. Don't forget to back up your facebook contacts REGULARLY via your yahoo email account. In fact if you haven't done it yet then do it right now while you're thinking about it. If you need any help with that PLEASE let me know. I'd hate to see you loose all your contacts because you didnt back them up.

Tom