Facebook Opt Out
The smarter marketers like Seth Godin go against conventional wisdom, and practice their craft in accordance with the following fact:
Opt Out = Spam
If you automatically start sending people alerts and emails when they come to your site, with a small message at the bottom of each saying "You're getting these emails because you registered on our site. Feel free to go to your 'Settings' page to turn them off."
You know what this sounds like? "Ha! We tricked you!" It's like those check boxes on registration forms that use convoluted language so that you don't know whether or not you should check the box to avoid getting emails from them.
If I want to hear from you, I will tell you. Simple as that. Opt-in should be the standard for businesses and marketers that don't want to annoy their customers and burn their brand.
A very similar thing happens on Facebook. As soon as you accept a friend request from someone, you're accepting not only the connection, but their wall posts become part of their news feed. Depending on how often they post updates, you might start hearing from them several times a day, whether you want to or not.
Personally, this doesn't bother me. You're able to hide (opt out) of anyone's status updates that you want, but I choose not to block a single person because I want to hear what people have to say. Some people never post anything of interest to me, but that doesn't bother me. I want to hear what they have to say. If you're friends with me, I'm listening to what you say. I'm interested in diversity of opinion.
If someone turns down a friend request from me, or removes me as a friend, I don't take it personally. You can only handle so many status updates in your news feed before it's overwhelming. (Some of my friends have almost 1000 friends of their own. I wonder how they handle the onslaught.)
There's on exception to the "no block" guideline of mine: apps. I'm not interested in FarmVille, PersonalZoo, or any other games you're playing on there. I block them every time. Fortunately, you can block updates from apps without blocking statuses from that person.
But it's interesting that Facebook assumes we want to get statuses from everyone we're friends with in our news feed, every group that each person has joined, every new connection made by friends. I know that these are editable under "Settings", but it's interesting that the default is "show me everything".
Think of the way Twitter does this. Follow whoever you want by opting in.
Opt Out = Spam
If you automatically start sending people alerts and emails when they come to your site, with a small message at the bottom of each saying "You're getting these emails because you registered on our site. Feel free to go to your 'Settings' page to turn them off."
You know what this sounds like? "Ha! We tricked you!" It's like those check boxes on registration forms that use convoluted language so that you don't know whether or not you should check the box to avoid getting emails from them.
If I want to hear from you, I will tell you. Simple as that. Opt-in should be the standard for businesses and marketers that don't want to annoy their customers and burn their brand.
A very similar thing happens on Facebook. As soon as you accept a friend request from someone, you're accepting not only the connection, but their wall posts become part of their news feed. Depending on how often they post updates, you might start hearing from them several times a day, whether you want to or not.
Personally, this doesn't bother me. You're able to hide (opt out) of anyone's status updates that you want, but I choose not to block a single person because I want to hear what people have to say. Some people never post anything of interest to me, but that doesn't bother me. I want to hear what they have to say. If you're friends with me, I'm listening to what you say. I'm interested in diversity of opinion.
If someone turns down a friend request from me, or removes me as a friend, I don't take it personally. You can only handle so many status updates in your news feed before it's overwhelming. (Some of my friends have almost 1000 friends of their own. I wonder how they handle the onslaught.)
There's on exception to the "no block" guideline of mine: apps. I'm not interested in FarmVille, PersonalZoo, or any other games you're playing on there. I block them every time. Fortunately, you can block updates from apps without blocking statuses from that person.
But it's interesting that Facebook assumes we want to get statuses from everyone we're friends with in our news feed, every group that each person has joined, every new connection made by friends. I know that these are editable under "Settings", but it's interesting that the default is "show me everything".
Think of the way Twitter does this. Follow whoever you want by opting in.