Facebook Slapped Me In The Face!
So there I was two days ago…I just watched an awesome movie about Gold and Silver and wanted to send it to my group “The Real Estate Investing Network” that I admin on facebook. I felt the content would benefit each and every member of the group, and that it would be applicable to the real estate world helping everyone in the group with their business and personal financial education.
Before I get to the rest of the story I want to share with you why I created the group during the middle of August 2007 in the first place. Being someone who is an entrepreneur, has a passion for real estate and networking, I figured that a good idea would be to gather a group of like minded individuals around the interest of Real Estate Investing. My intention with the group that I created on facebook would be to build a community around the interest where I would be able to help attract high end real estate investors, people who are interested in real estate, and others who would be able to help new and seasoned real estate investors all at the same time. Another facet of the group that I wanted to provide was consistent communication between me and the group members by providing them beneficial content that would improve them in some way whether it would be helping them with their business, or helping them increase their skills. One of the first things I did to foster all of this collaboration was asking the people in the group for resources that they feel would benefit the members of the group. This was an amazing success and as you will see from the resource list we have compiled there is a plethora of resources for any seasoned or new real estate investor to take advantage of. Secondly, while asking for resources from the group members themselves I would also send them good quality content using the group messaging feature, such as the link to this blog helping them increase their networking skills, or links to other beneficial content that I came across on a daily basis, like the gold movie, that I felt would personally help the members base with their self growth and investing activities.
So back to the story…As I opened up my group page I looked under the group picture for “Send Message To Group” button for some reason it wasn’t there. Just to make sure I was not just seeing things I went to other groups that I am an admin of and noticed the messaging feature for those was still in tact.
Because of this inconvenience I messaged facebook support center to ask them what was wrong. I didn’t understand why I was blocked from sending the beneficial content to the group. Sadly, I came to find out from the support center person that if groups gather more than 1200 members, (the group right now as I write this post is at 1325), the admins can’t send messages out to the members anymore because facebook wants to “protect the members so they are not spammed.”
Now after hearing this from facebook it really ticked me off because I am thinking to myself…Here I am, creating a group that provides facebook tons of value, continually sending the members base good and beneficial material about the economy as well as Real Estate…and just because the group has hit over 1200 members they now remove that privilege from me to continually make a difference in peoples lives?
I JUST DON’T GET IT! The whole, “fear of spamming people” excuse from facebook is really stupid in my opinion because if you LOGICALLY think about it…if people in a group are spammed, what are the chances they will stick in the group? It doesn’t take a PhD to figure out that they wouldn’t stay very long…and on the flipside, if the group continually provided them good value on a consistent basis they would stick, and refer other people in their network in the group to further help it become a better place to interact and communicate with people around the same interest!
As you can see I am pretty bent out of shape because of this…because if you look at everything that I have ever sent out to the group itself, it was nothing but beneficial content. I even reserved a conference calling line to later in time do conference calls with the group…letting people know about it using the messaging feature, where I would bring in expert real estate investors to share their knowledge with everyone in the community…further helping everyone grow and prosper at the same time.
Anyway amid my rant…I am asking you as my fellow readers and supporters to help me create a conversation in the blogosphere that will hopefully help facebook change their mind about their absurd policy. They are really doing a disservice to the admins and the members in the admins groups of over 1200 people because they are disabling the privilege to “foster communication between the people that you know and don’t know.”
As it says on the main page, “Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you.” Yet, they don’t give group admins the benefit of the doubt and technological control how and when they can collaborate with the groups they took so long to build…As I stated above I have been building this exclusive network since the middle of August 2007.
Please help me make my voice be heard and either digg, stumble, del.ici.ous, link to, reddit and talk about this post on your blogs!
I appreciate any and all of your help!
April 7th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Nice writing. You are on my RSS reader now so I can read more from you down the road.
Allen Taylor
April 7th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Scott, I am with you on this one. I have a group with 1530 members and it annoys me to no end that I cannot communicate directly with them anymore. I could launch a Fan Page but then that would require building the whole group from scratch (Fan Pages have no limit on how many people can be sent an update).
If this really is about networking and fostering communication, then closing a communication channel isn’t smart. Let’s hope they are listening.
April 8th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Hi Scott.
Just by definition, someone who joins a group is not considered spammed when they receive email from the group admin. So, how FB figures you are spamming when you have 1,200 vs 1,199 members is very odd.
Come on, Facebook. Let us do our social networking!
April 9th, 2008 at 4:47 am
We like your blog!
[...]Mabuhay, my colleagues and I heard of your blog over at McBrides, so we thought we would take a look. We’ve read several of your posts and we all agree that you have a fine writing style[...]
April 10th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
I agree with all above, fb should change this. I do have a crazy idea that might work, its more work than getting fb to change but that could take forever.
Your group look like theres not a whole lot of interaction btwn memebers, discussion is mostly 1 post by 1 person
What would it be like to create a Real Estate Investing Network 2, put up a wall post asking people to leave 1 and move to 2 til you get the group 1 members below 1200, then close group 1? With that many people you know how some people check in all the time and some check once a month? It might work out. And put a link at the top of group1 of This group is closed please join us at Link to group2
Then you have 2 group emails to send but better than nothing. And in the meantime do the fan page which is another layer of bother fb created. Maybe it would be nice if fb allowed migration of a group to a fan page by default, like we are moving you UNLESS you reply no.
I hope that made sense!
funDiva Christy
April 12th, 2008 at 6:57 am
Its not spam when they can unsubscribe from the group, yes, thats ridiculous.
May 27th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Couldn’t agree with you better Scott. I own a Facebook group that has 1500 members as I post this and I wanted to send an important message to all the members and I was literally shocked to learn about the “<=1200″ restriction. Trust me it so bugging and this is the first time that Facebook let me down.
June 2nd, 2008 at 3:21 am
Hi.
We also have the same problem with our group. So I know what its like.
We are as we speak building a website for our group, and will withing few weeks move our members to that website. Dont know if that will have any impact on Facebook, but hopefully it will give them something to think about.
Social my a..
August 9th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Dear Scott:
I totally support you. I have a 5015 persons group and the last 500 was actually invited by a banner that was paid to facebook.
When you purchase a banner, there is the option “promote something in facebook”, so i took it to promote the group. Now i just wasted my money. I had the option to send msgs to the group until the 5000 users.
I BELIEVE THIS IS UNFAIR.
Keep writing in this blog so we can be in touch.
December 3rd, 2008 at 12:39 pm
I came to this page searching for that 5000 user message block, i beleive the reason why they do this is not because they thinkg you are spamming, but because there is certain ammount of system resources to do the message sending job when you have a large quantity of users. In any case they could do a job schedule to send 100 msgs every 15 minutes or anything that oculd help to fix this, I worked real hard to get 5000 people in my group and it sn’t worth a cent if i cannot send messages.
Rod.-