43% of facebook messages are spam, according to research paper from HP.
http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/idl/papers/facebook/
Its a very detailed study giving breakdowns of how facebook users message each other and what they are doing on the site.
You could swap in match.com plentyoffish or any other dating site in place of facebook and the usage patterns would be pretty similar.
March 28, 2007 at 12:51 am |
As a facebook user and someone who has read the HPL paper I’m not sure that its accurate to say facebook messages are 43% spam. On facebook you can only send a message to a single user or to the members of a group that you own. The way the HP guys classify messages as spam (see appendix A for details) would mark most messages sent to groups as spam, leading to this high number. The sending messages to groups is not spam because it is solicited. By joining a group you agree to be messaged by the group owner with updates etc.
Since joining facebook I’ve received 904 messages, only 1 of which has been what I think is spam, giving 0.11% spam. Perhaps I’ve been lucky but I doubt it.
Other than this little quibble I like this paper. The graphs are great and I would love to see the ‘private’ message/poke data in this study contrasted with ‘public’ wall posts/comments on facebook.
March 28, 2007 at 6:12 am |
When they say 43% of facebook messages are spam im pretty sure they are refering to groups sending out mass mailings to all its members, some groups consist of over 100,000 people and thus if they send a message out that instantly is 100,000 messages so that 43% would make sense. That seems to be the only way currently to spam a massive amount of people practicly on facebook.
March 28, 2007 at 6:06 pm |
Hi Marcus, sorry to write you here but I’d like to be able to get in touch with you. Can you email me your full contact information when you have a moment.
Thanks,
Noah
Noah Robinson
VP, Business Development
Glispa Media
noah@glispa.com
t: 212-253-0860
f: 917-591-5473
March 28, 2007 at 6:40 pm |
I don’t know about face book, but here on WordPress that’s not even close.
Since moving my blog to Word Press on February 16, 2007; I have gotten 21 “real” comments that were actually comments, and 362 “spam” comments that were just random posts with between 5 to 73 links in the post (all of them linking to Porn sites)… 21 to 362 is a lot higher than 43%
March 29, 2007 at 1:11 am |
Akismet does a decent job of blocking spam posts for me.
March 30, 2007 at 9:50 pm |
Hi Markus,
Thought I’d point you to the article on the owner of FrindFinder at Business 2.0:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/04/01/8403370/index.htm?postversion=2007033011
Best,
John
April 14, 2007 at 10:39 pm |
thats huge.
April 18, 2007 at 4:48 pm |
[...] News Item #1: A detailed research from HP reveals that 43% of Facebook messages are spam. Marcus from Plentyoffish dating site puts it correctly that you would similar figures on any other social [...]
April 24, 2007 at 8:54 pm |
I run a site…and regardless the amount of spam..the social networks are doing better then normal email. plus if your getting spam..simply change your privacy settings.
david
http://www.famuse.com
May 26, 2007 at 4:22 am |
I have never been to facebook, never registered until today when they sent me an email from someone I dont know
their unsubscrible link (I’ve never been there to subscribe) goes to a dead page on their site
This is spam- blatent spam
and if you search google for facebook spam you will find I am not the only one
August 20, 2007 at 3:00 pm |
[...] Facebook messages are spam. According to research by HP, 43% of facebook messages are spam (see http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2007/03/27/43-of-facebook-messages-are-spam-according-to-research-…). In the last 2 days I have received friend requests from people I don’t know or heard [...]
January 6, 2008 at 2:41 am |
Facebook has been turning bad for about 2 months. In 6 months it’ll be worthless and no one will go to it.
February 4, 2008 at 7:48 am |
I have seen where they now disable random accounts, assuming they are spammers.. Is there any way to get things back to the mid-1990’s when ppl were normal online?
March 27, 2009 at 10:02 am |
Whenever I join the group soon after I receive messages from group owners with their advertising. This is what I don’t like. I don’t mind receiving some important updates but advertising seems too forced on me. I like to read group posts and choose what to read but I don’t like wasting time on endless messages with links to their special interests sites.