Cyberclinic: With Friends Like These...
I've just been added as a friend on Facebook by a couple of people. I've got no idea who they are. We have no friends in common. I suppose that it's conceivable that they think I'm great and really want to be my best mate, although if they knew the truth (that I'm a swirling miasma of fury, anxiety and lack of tolerance) they'd probably retract their offer of friendship pretty quickly.
Since the advent of social networking, there have always been the serial "adders", people who have an overwhelming desire to either feel, or appear, massively connected to an enormous matrix of human beings. And it's easier than ever to construct that artifice.
If you do a quick search for "friend bot" on Google (and ignore this chat software that enables you to indulge in pointless automated conversations with a computer) you'll find third party tools that allow you to send automated friend requests, comments and more on a whole range of networking sites – MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and more.
Twitter users have become particularly prone to being randomly added; Twitter friend bots scan the frankly terrifying Twitter public time-line (dozens of people posting every second), hoover up the names and add them to your list. So you find people like Juan Carzola, who added me last week; I've no idea who on earth he is, but he's "friended" over 60,000 people. Perhaps more alarmingly, over 6,000 people are needy enough to have "friended" him back.
Of course, online friendship with someone doesn't bond you inextricably, by any means; you're just names on a list, a statistic in a sidebar. Even if I bothered to reciprocate friendship with Mr Carzola, that doesn't mean I have to pay any attention to him.
All serial friend-adding is, really, is a low-level form of spam beloved of attention grabbers and desperate indie bands on MySpace, and it's nearly always breaking the terms and conditions of the website itself. But bigger corporations are not below stooping to such levels; it's been noted recently that Ticketmaster's list of loyal supporters on Facebook consists largely of fake profiles.
One blogger posted yesterday morning about his irritation at being invited to become a "fan" of Ticketmaster, and his bewilderment at the company having over 156,000 fans – the fifth most popular on Facebook. He initially accused them of using bots to create fake profiles; the reality is that, through an online offer, Ticketmaster offered five free iTunes downloads to anyone who would be their Facebook fan. Cue a mass of people creating multiple profiles under fake email addresses to get their hands on the free music.
So, essentially, Ticketmaster bought their way to popularity. Which, some might say, is even more tragic than using software.
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It's bizarre to try and accumulate 'friends' on Facebook. That's surely not the idea nor the ethos. It's obviously a complete waste of time, but it's a complete waste of time with people you know/like, not weirdos.
Just about to go and throw a sheep at you...
Posted by: Robbo | Tuesday, 15 April 2008 at 05:19 PM