Facebook has graciously handed me yet another topic to discuss while on my quest for literary fame.
This week I was contacted by a zombie fan whom I had previously connected with through one of my Facebook advertising efforts. She has been a most excellent and loyal fan, liking and commenting on many of my FB posts and forwarding me a number of interesting events. She is one of the few successes of my FB advertising campaign, which I have discussed in more detail in the past.
Anyway, this week, my friendly zombie head invited me to a virtual zombie event. There are some 45 confirmed zombie authors that will be giving out free copies of their books, a couple artists, and even a publisher. So far the confirmed attendance is 200 and growing with a month to go before the event begins. Naturally, I am interested in not only attending, but also giving out some copies of my book.
In order to RSVP for the event as writer, I had to private message the event coordinator. I danced over to the coordinator's profile and clicked the "Message" button. What do you suppose I found? Wait for it. This one made my jaw drop. A dialogue box popped up and informed me that I am not currently friends with this person and my message will be screened into a junk mail folder. BUT if I pay $1, my message will be sent to his inbox. SERIOUSLY?
I'm not sure what pisses me off more, the fact that Zuckerburg is trying to squeeze cash out of me as a business or that as user I can be bombarded with spam if the price is right. In the past you couldn't contact non-friends with high security settings for privacy purposes. No you can't contact non-friends for financial purposes. Un-be-lievable.
So I promptly made friends with the coordinator to dodge the toll and RSVP as a writer. As much as I am beginning to hate Facebook, it is a market that can not be ignored. It is so ubiquitous and controls too much to boycott. It has all the trappings of becoming my second most hated necessity, second only to Microsoft. Gah!
Happy Easter! I'm going to go drink some wine, have a drunken egg hunt, and celebrate the true zombie holiday.
I heard about this change some time ago. I haven't been bombarded with spam, as many feared would happen, but I guess it's still early days yet.
ReplyDeleteFB seems to just get worse and worse, and I've noticed that almost everyone I know uses it less and less. It's not dying yet, but everything has its use-by-date and some of the changes FB are making smack of desperation.
At the end of the day, however, FB is huge and free, so they have to make their money somewhere. It's just a shame that they treat big corporations exactly the same as self-employed solo enterprises.