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"Louis Gray makes an interesting point this evening:\n\"I don't mind the occasional note from someone I don't know (or know well) asking me to be friends on Facebook, or to connect on LinkedIn ... But now, new social networking sites, or even warmed-over old ones, are starting to fill my e-mail with absolute junk, under the guise of \"real world\" friends reaching out and begging me to share our similarities - to compare books I like with their own preferences, exchange favorite movie listings, or see if we've traveled to the same countries.\"\nI've noticed this, too.  I can't say I'm too excited about this Project Beacon thing coming along, either. The fact that I'm going to be inundated with more spammy goodness about my \"friends\" shopping habits doesn't exactly make me want to log back onto Facebook again and again.\nI've been fairly visible in a number of different online communities, mostly having to do with podcasting in some form or another. Additionally, over the last six years or so, I've been somewhat of a spokesperson or executive type for about three or four different small startups with customer bases ranging in number from 1,600 to about 8,000 each.  As such, my email contact database has grown tremendously over the years.\nIt is for that reason I tend to shy away from doing mass invites to social networking sites when asked. I have done it a few times (with Plaxo, Twitter and Facebook; mostly because of the potential business applications I saw in them). What I'm finding now with Facebook, though, is that the trickle of Bac'n has already started - independent of whatever new advertising initiatives Facebook has planned. I had hoped, perhaps in vain, that by joining a social network, and staying primarily within a pool of business-centric users, that unwanted communications like this would be a thing of the past.\nAt first, it looked like I was right. When I first joined Facebook, and the email hit me up to come check my Facebook inbox because I had new mail, I was actually somewhat excited to go over and log in - it meant someone either important or close to me was there to ask me a question or chat with me on something.\nNow, (and this is mainly coming from affiliate marketers and certain folks in the podcasting world), I'm getting Bac'ned on a consistent basis from guys I've talked to maybe once or twice, inviting me to join them for the exciting next episode of their podcast or brand new get-rich-quick affiliate scheme.\n\nListen!  If I'm your \"friend\" on Facebook, I'm already subscribed to your podcast! I don't need you to send me a Facebook message each time you update your show! If you've got a special event of some type, use the events system, and ask me to RSVP. If you want to use a system designed to support your spammy behaviors, get back over on MySpace.\nIt'd be one thing if they actually responded once in a while when I write a \"hey, how are you doing?\" message or \"I'm starting a project around this, interested?\" message. It is quite another when they don't respond to these amicable types of messages, and then expect me to hop to it just because they've got some spectacular new thing for me to check out.\nBut I'm a guy with somewhere around a hundred or so folks on his friend list. It is no wonder that some of the folks that I joined Facebook to talk to, like Ken Rutkowski and Robert Scoble, only answer about one in five messages I send their way. I used to be a little irked that they'd pitched me a bill of goods about how great it was for business communication, and then didn't really communicate effectively using the tool. At this point, I'm wondering what possible value the system can hold for them, aside from a semi-captive audience for their periodic media offerings.\nThese are just *some* of the contributing factors to my Facebook fatigue (see here for others). Add to that Facebook intends to track my purchases and behaviors on other websites, and then send more spam to folks in my circle?\nQuite honestly, I keep thinking of ways I can duck out of Facebook altogether. The problem is that Facebook is the worst social network in the entire Internet - except for all the other ones.  Perhaps I'll get lucky, and someone will roll out a hack for OpenSocial that'll allow us to communicate between social networks, and we won't be tied down to a single spot simply because we've invested our social karma in getting our contact database imported to a particular network."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2007/11/07/facebook-bacn-and-spam/>