Has this happened to you? You receive a message on Facebook that you've been tagged in a photo, but when you go to look at the photo you discover that it wasn't you at all, but some sort of product, service, or cause that a marketer is trying to promote. According to news from AdAge, this is the latest in guerrilla marketing efforts making its way through Facebook right now. It's so slimy, we hesitate to even mention it here, lest we give anyone ideas.
So, how does this work? Basically, a marketer looking to promote something tags a photo with several of their most influential friends' names. Those "friends" aren't necessarily supporting the given cause, they've just had their name hijacked for this purpose. That tagged photo ends up in the news feeds of the friends of those influentials as if it was a photo of them. After people click through to view it, they discover that it's not actually a picture of their friend at all, but a message in support of some cause, product, or service.
For the marketer, this is an quick way to quickly push a message to wide group of people. Tag 20 friends, and through the friend-of-a-friend (FOAF) network, you could easily reach thousands.
According to AdAge, photos are an ideal vehicle for marketers for three reasons. Sam Lessin writes, "First, people love them and tend to click on them all the time. Second, they get incredible real estate in news feed. Third, any message put into photos has a strange automatic relevance because it is attached to the name of a friend. Finally, there is a huge curiosity factor as to why a friend is tagged in an image."
What's worse is that he concludes the article by encouraging people to use this new method of promotion. Yikes! We absolutely hate this idea and hope that Facebook figures out a way to stop this marketing loophole before news feeds get filled with spam.
Photo courtesy of Facebook
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all Read/WriteWeb posts
Wow, I thought spam innovation is going on mainly in USA and other developed-internet countries.
We in Russia have that kind of spam for a year at the very least (that's when I signed up to a Russian social network) - it's usually used to promote some concerts, parties or other events. What's interesting is that my contacts tag me (and all their other friends) in these pictures, not some marketing agency - never understood how they fail to see they're spamming.
Posted by: Nikita | November 14, 2008 7:10 AM
Restricting tagging to friends should solve the problem as long as you don't friend marketers...
Posted by: Jean-Marc Liotier
|
November 14, 2008 7:22 AM
Marketing pirates should be punished. Facebook is wrought with these kinds of Achilles' heels. End of day, it is a free service that has been built through viral marketing. Turns out that viral marketing techniques may come with incurable symptoms. Nothing's for free...
Posted by: Danny | November 14, 2008 9:25 AM
interesting way to take it - a few followup thoughts I just posted on my blog http://drop.io/swl - best, sam
Posted by: sam lessin | November 15, 2008 3:19 PM
so is sam our first facebook blackhat?
Posted by: allen | November 15, 2008 6:08 PM
pls can u see me a good book,that will tech me how to read and write
Posted by: james | November 17, 2008 2:33 AM
Trust me, event promoters are notorious for this. They also do it with videos.
As far as I can tell, Facebook does not allow a person to have to approve a photo or video tag before it goes live.
That simple option would be nice since I can already control many of the things that show up in my feed.
Tagging is already limited to people you are connected to so maybe we should all just start unfriending people who use tag spam :-)
Posted by: David Mullings | November 18, 2008 12:02 PM
hi
Posted by: sees | December 1, 2008 10:28 AM
idflssjkdldh
Posted by: francis prempeh | December 13, 2008 9:41 AM