Facebook the world's largest social site is becoming more and more like an anti social site everyday. They are disabling accounts for not using actual pictures of one's self, preventing people from adding friends to play games, disabling people from posting on their walls messages to their friends and the list goes on and on.
Over the past few weeks 100's of people I know, who play the games on their site, have been disabled for not using a real picture or having a pseudo name. They give no warning and they require you to send in an id with that account name. So these people are not getting their accounts back because they are using the site to play games and socialize with their online game friends.
Yes, this does violate Facebook's terms of service, but they were made before the social game craze took hold on Facebook. Now it is a big business for them as they get 30% of the social games profits when a person purchases credits to buy a virtual game product and this turns into millions for them. But they have yet to adjust the TOS to reflect this and don't seem like they are in a hurry to do so.
The people who play games also are getting disabled for posting to many messages or requests for help to play the game. Now this is the fault of both the social game developers and Facebook as the games require you to ask for help and Facebook refuses to tell the users the limits on posting. So the social games need to put limits on the amount of posts their player can put up a day to protect them. And Facebook needs to be more forth coming on what the rules are.
The social game companies are now trying to help the Facebook users by trying to go to bat for them in helping them get their disabled accounts back. They are also trying to track the number of accounts disabled as this is not good for them as it cut into their profits when a user is disabled and this is big business for them. To give you an idea how big it is, Zynga, the largest developer of games on Facebook, is on pace to make almost 700 million dollars this year and should make well over a billion dollars in 2011.
The newest thing Facebook is doing to their users is preventing them from adding friends to their accounts. They are telling them that their request can not be sent. And then ask them if they know them personally? Then tell them to go to the help center for an answer because Facebook does not have a real customer service department and has no telephone customer service.
So once again the users suffer because they are trying to be social and Facebook is preventing it. The social games want you to add friends to play the games but Facebook doesn't want you to add them unless you know them. The social games are also looking for solutions for this one as well.
Facebook is a good site to socialize on if it is only with your family and friends. Try to play the games on their site then you are a target. They don't give you any clear guidelines on how to use the site, they have no real customer service department, they expose your private information to the world including your credit information when you buy game credits and give you no real warning that you are in violation and are putting your account in jeopardy. Not a good thing to be doing if you are a social site. So you decide, are they social or are they anti social?
yes everything ya told is true ,completely agree with ya .
ReplyDelete