Erased from History

How would you feel if you woke up one morning only to discover that facebook had erased you; Your account disabled and every trace of your social networking activities deleted at the push of the button.

Facebook’s Hit List

Some of the top social networkers are getting very concerned  as their friends are vanishing without warning and they fear that they might be next on Facebook’s hit list.

If you have spent months building your network and establishing your credibility  this might come as a heavy blow, especially if you haven’t taken a back up of your friends list or exported your contacts onto your own autoresponder.

Scott Disappears

Yesterday one of my favourite people on Facebook vanished, Scott Brandon Hoffman, a guy everyone likes and a person who has added huge value to many peoples lives with his inspiring articles and his articulate and amusing replies in the discussion threads.

Where is Scott Brandon Hoffman?

Addy Tseng was quick off the mark to write about what had happened but I am still waiting to discover exactly what he did to get himself booted off Facebook. I sent Scott a message on Twitter but he hasn’t responded yet.

Has Facebook Gone Cuckoo

Meanwhile Jim Turner, one of the pillars of our facebook community has been threatened because he messaged a few people who had requested to become his friend. Jim has been maxed out at 5000 friends and wanted to direct people to his fan page. His excellent post – Has Facebook Gone Cuckoo is getting a lot of interesting comments. Martin Allsop also claims this has happened to him too

I have received messages from several other marketers who have been warned or had their accounts disabled recently but prefer not to be mentioned by name.

New Anti Spam Algorithms

From all the evidence I can only conclude that facebook have changed their Spam Algorithms. These are automated programs that detect suspicious activity on facebook and disables  those who abuse its members. Spam has been a major problem for  the last few months since the influx of the internet marketing crowd, so I suspect that  Facebook are finally  listening to the many complaints  and have started cracking down.

A Heavy Handed Approach

While I support this in principle I feel concerned that they are being  a bit heavy handed and innocent people are suffering and having their businesses and reputations damaged as a result. What makes it worse is that there is no real way to talk to facebook and explain the situation except to write grovelling emails and hope that some anonymous facebook admin feels pity and approves you for reinstatement.

I know of at least 2 people who got banned for posting on a friends wall  and were then reported by that person as spammers.

Share Your Story

Blatant self promotion, signature tags, event and  group invitations  might now be considered capital offences. As more people fall foul of the new rules we can build up a clearer picture of  exactly what you can and can’t do. If you have had your account disabled or received a warning recently please leave a  comment  and tell us exactly what happened.

Don’t Get Banned – A Quick List of the Do’s and Don’ts

Here is my quick list that gives you the main offences that facebook have penalised in the past. For a more detailed explanation you can download my free facebook made easy guide.

Don’t Grow Too Quickly

Restrict How Many Friends You Add Per Day

Don’t Look Like A Spammer

Don’t Join Too Many Groups – Keep it under 200

Never Cut And Paste

Avoid  Aggressive  Marketing

Don’t Spam Facebook Groups

Don’t Create Multiple Accounts

You Have To Be A Real Person

Don’t Invite Too Many People at once To Your Facebook Groups

Don’t Message the Same Group More than Twice In One Day

Don’t Post Offensive Material – Be A Responsible Facebook Citizen

I think we need to add a few more to this list

Don’t write on too many friends walls in any one day (?? )

Don’t invite too many people to someone else’s event

If you have 5000 friends, don’t message anyone who is not your friend (???)

Don’t send affiliate  links in  private messages to people you don’t know

Take Out Insurance

There are a few steps you can take if you want to take out some insurance to protect yourself should the worst happen

Back Up Your List Of Friends

Keep a back up of your friends list in a spreadsheet.  For details on how to do this read this thread in my facebook made easy group where Alberto Escobar and Tony Williams show two different ways to do it.

Own Your Own List

Get all your friends into a group or host an event and then get the members to subscribe to your email list. Having your contacts on an auto responder makes it easy should you ever need to find people again. I use Aweber who are excellent. the other popular service is Get Response, both are paid services and they give you a  free 30 day test drive.

Get your friends to follow you on Twitter, then if Facebook choose to pull the plug you still have a way to communicate.

Share Responsibility

If you have a Facebook Group, Always get a friend to be a joint Admin, That way if you get your account shut down the group will still continue and your friend can then message all the members asking them to re-friend you when you return. You can also spread the risk when inviting friends to join your group and promoting group events.

Join A Private Membership Site

Consider joining a private membership site. I am a member of, Brian Campbell’s  Social Media Marketing  System and Travis Greenlee’s Master Business Builders Club. Travis’s is launching his new site right now and I know a few of my friends have signed up. I believe that in the future more people will want to have the freedom and protection  that a private site brings and we will  be drawn to those that provide the best value and  whave the highest quality of members. Of course you can also start your own free community at a place like Ning, there are good reasons to  belong to both free and paid membership sites and I will discuss this in a later post.