Permission is the Cure for SNAM

at fast company. found via boingboing via trendsetters

Trendsetters summarizes an article on Fast Company regarding SNAM: Social Network SPAM

Spam Social Networks Foster New Form of Spam: SNAM. Social networks have spawned a new form of spam that uses the FOAF (Friend of a Friend) message feature frequently found in this new genre of networks. Google’s Orkut, a network of some 200,000 members, offers the ability to send messages to FOAFs. FOAF messages often contain conference promotions or job postings that, while low in volume, will one day require action on the part of network managers.

As a result, Fast Company predicts that the rise of SNAM will cause the following:

What will prove more valuable is social networking within organizations. Companies such as Contact Network, Spoke Software, Interface Software, and ZeroDegrees collect individual contact data from a company's employees, then merge it with those workers' past employment histories. You can type in a company name, like General Motors, and find out that a colleague three floors up once worked there. With the contact owner's permission, you can get in touch with someone at your target company.

I don't disagree with this. However, I do disagree with the prediction of the demise of social networking systems because of SNAM. Instead, I say GRANTING PERMISSION is the future. At WhizSpark, we've designed a social network that uses the best techniques of permission based email marketing to ensure that SNAM isn't a problem. Connecting with someone is just like signing up for their newsletter. (sign up for one of mine)

Also, while I am on my soap-box, let me say this:

Information flows directionally.

One more time:

Information flows directionally.

Although it'd be nice to strive for a world where everyone is equal, where everyone you consider a friend, considers you a friend too, we just aren't there yet. What is with this "Please approve Joe Blow is your friend?" shite? If I want to hear from Joe Blow, I should be able to sign up to hear from Joe Blow. If he wants to hear from me, he should sign up to give permission to me to send him stuff. Just because I want to receive John Battelle's Weekly reFind Email, doesn't mean he wants to read my weekly email. Just because I might want to go to a party that Paris Hilton is going to, doesn't mean she would want to go to a party I want to go to. The world hasn't turned into a mutual admiration society just because Josh Abrams helped us make a cool picture collage of our friends. At the end of the day, We are all still star fu%&$ers.

Right now, the only thing most social networks are good for, is creating a record that you met someone or talked to someone online. As we move forward and do more constructive things on them, we will need PERMISSION built into the product in order to avoid SNAM or atleast punish (by renegging our permission), those people that don't ascribe to our own personal vision of what messages we want to receive.