Facebook vs Harry Joiner

Harry Strikes Back.

The Marketing Headhunter was kicked off of Facebook for trying to invite his entire 4600 gmail address book to the social networking site.

When his story was picked up by Ann Handley on The Huffington Post, the usual repressed geniuses started saying that he is a spammer and only got what he deserved. Harry, however, replied with vigour:

Tech pundit Robert Scoble had blogged that Facebook is the new Rolodex. Turns out that Mr. Scoble has 4200 contacts in Facebook. This being the modern world, all of us have hundreds (if not thousands) of email addresses on file.

Facebook never mentioned a limit to the number of friends I could have. And Facebook never told me that I had to add my contacts one at a time. If they had, I would have. Happily.

Instead, what Facebook told me to do was invite my friends not already on their network. They even gave me a very robust email address inhaler to accomplish this task. Again: They never mentioned a limit, and I was unaware of any wrongdoing until AFTER I hit the send button.

THEN, rather than "warn" me against future violations, they simply cut me off FOREVER without further review. And the guy who cut me off was a low level customer service rep who sent me a misspelled form email advising that "This decision is final."

Instead of facilitating my mass email upload, it would have been helpful if Facebook's inhaler had simply capped it, rather than (as you suggest) expect me to go back and read the fine print in the user agreement. Honestly, who among us is going to do that? That's absurd.

Bottom line: I have a long track record of playing by the rules when the rules are posted.

Facebook Series: Scoble Scorns Recruiter.
Harry Strikes Back.
Facebook Declares War.
Facebook Bans Recruiter

Comments

[Richard Becker]

Scoble likely blogged that Facebook is the new Rolodex because he has 4200 contacts in Facebook.

The opinions might be mixed, but the truth is clear enough. Harry did exactly what they enabled him to do (add all those people) and he did it better than most. I joined Facebook shortly after reading about Harry's ban and was less than impressed.

It's very clear we are approaching a social networking bubble. There are too many to keep up with so you have to pick and chose. Scoble and other influencers will likely pick the ones that work best for them (no other reason really).

Harry. You can your 4,600 contacts are probably better off anyway.

[Recruiting Animal]

Note that Scoble seems to reached his high number of Facebook Friends by having people approach him rather than the other way around. There is no indication on his article that he uploaded his entire Outlook Address Book although he is saying that Facebook will replace it.