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dwot (99.55)

Facebook: Punitive business model

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June 25, 2010 – Comments (10)

By all accounts facebook is growing in leaps and bounds, but they sure do treat clients badly.  I keep hearing bad things about the way facebook operates.  Facebook is a social network, but they constantly freeze accounts for being social, and when they do so they cut people off from all of the services in facebook.

I know I got frozen for messaging a friend too much.  Meanwhile, I had ordered things online through facebook, items that never came and I was blocked from accessing my order information and doing follow-up.  My crime of abuse on this social network was using messages instead of their chat, and their chat had such bad programming it would crash my computer.  I never did get the items, a bunch of documentaries for school.

I know of someone on CAPS who had their account permantly disabled for messaging abuse when they were trying to organize an event for high school graduation.  What a disaster, it cut off all information with regards to who had expressed interested, ideas, etc.  Amazing how they call themself a social network, but are grossly punative against normal activities people think they can use facebook for, but often find it is not the case.

They have games and some people do not play games fairly.  Facebook allows people to report other people and then accounts get frozen.  There is no investigation, just automatically freezing the account.  Some people have spent a lot of money on their games and then facebook cuts them off.  

Facebook also freezes accounts for adding friends in what they deem as too fast.  So, facebook will allow you to go into your personal email file and will automatically send an invite to everyone in your email and then they will freeze you for adding too many friends.  Some of the games also require you to add friends, and again, and if you do it facebook will freeze your account.

In some cases facebook has had thousands of dollars being spent on various applications by some people and facebook repeatedly freezes their account.  I know a person that has spent over $10k on facebook applications and has had his account frozen at least a dozen times.

People like facebook for what it offers, but they sure do treat clients with contempt.

 

10 Comments – Post Your Own

#1) On June 25, 2010 at 11:56 AM, miteycasey (96.52) wrote:

People still go to McDonald's, even though the food is bad for you. Your friend has spent $10k with them even though his account has been frozen repeatedly. What does that say about yoru friend?

 Microsoft has had so many visur outbreaks in their history, yet people rather deal with that than buy a MAC. 

 

I'm just saying until people walk away the abuse will continue.

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#2) On June 25, 2010 at 12:00 PM, Dobbes (< 20) wrote:

I imagine some of the high activity rules (lots of messaging and friend adding) rules are to counter marketers attempting to spam the network.

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#3) On June 25, 2010 at 12:42 PM, dwot (99.55) wrote:

Good point miteycasey.  They still have a disgusting business model.  And it says my friend is addicted to his facebook.

Dobbes, I think it is about preventing spam, but their screen system is way too simple.  Messaging the same person should not show up on their screen system and little bit more programming could easily exempt this kind of activity.  There also has to be a way to screen for something like organizing a social event or playing a game.

And they could put in some kind of appeal process.

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#4) On June 25, 2010 at 12:56 PM, chk999 (99.98) wrote:

Facebook is dealing with millions of teenagers. Given that, I think they act with restraint.

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#5) On June 25, 2010 at 1:28 PM, dwot (99.55) wrote:

Don't make me laugh so hard chk999, lol.

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#6) On June 25, 2010 at 1:31 PM, VintageCat (< 20) wrote:

Maybe it's just me but I just don't get the allure of FB.  South Park had an excellent episode mocking the social network.  

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SgkfghupFE

Hope the link works... 

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#7) On June 25, 2010 at 3:34 PM, FreeMortal (29.96) wrote:

I agree with what chk999 said. Facebook is dealing with the pains of a growing community.  They want users to free to do what they like but -like any community- they must balance this with safety and security.  This means they must be vigilent when it comes to spammers, scammers, and other unusual behavior. If they just let everything to its own, Facebook will end up a wasteland like MySpace. 

I'm an avid user of Facebook and though I have some complaints, they are very minor.  Most of the issues are due to the maturity of the social networking platform, where there are so many complicated ways of interacting that Facebook devs are constantly having to reorganize settings. 

This market has few barriers to entry other than brilliant minds.  If someone can make a new facebook-type site thats easier to use and safer, then Facebook will be in trouble.  For now, they do what they do much better than anyone else.

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#8) On June 25, 2010 at 3:44 PM, rofgile (98.99) wrote:

Facebook scares me.. though I am a privacy advocate.  I try to keep real world and internet world separate, and mostly use the internet for information gathering.

 -Rof 

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#9) On June 25, 2010 at 5:08 PM, imobillc (< 20) wrote:

I just recently joinned Facebook I was very hesitant to do so, from hearing all the stories. I will not upload pictures or list a whole bunch of personal stuff in their servers. I just don't trust them.

A few months back I remember reading a story about a web site that would assist you in committing "Facebook suicide" and Facebook totally shut them down and permanently banned the use of such system. I don't know the current status of their battle, but here is the link any way:

 http://suicidemachine.org/#

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#10) On June 25, 2010 at 8:39 PM, obsoleteaccount (77.50) wrote:

Although I think facebook is by far the best social networking site, I am not sure what they gain from going public as has been discussed.  Social networking sites come and go with the fads, since they are based mostly off of teens, unlike other companies who can succeeed for 5000 years with good fundamentals. Also, what would the company even do with the funding?

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