Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Social Media Happens in Someone Else's Sandbox

With many different companies running the many sites any social networking or social media project is running on, one must remember that you are playing in someone else's sandbox so you must not only follow their rules today, but abide by the changes they make in both the rules, but also how they enforce them. One example is in 2006 at one time MySpace did not react negatively to some very aggressive friend requesting behavior. In a study I conducted in spring 2008, it became clear that same aggressive behavior accepted in 2006 will now result in profile termination.

Getting a profile killed undoes all the work you did before. Being too aggressive was probably a bad idea anyway: annoying people is hardly a good plan in any situation, and certainly isn't a way to make friends or build a business.

No comments: