MySpace Spam or Clever Marketing?

In case some of you are wondering why your MySpace Friends lists are suddenly exploding, here’s why: I’ve been going crazy with MySpace promotion over the past few weeks.

Despite my misgivings about MySpace (which mainly have to do with the site’s design, functionality and usability — not its general purpose), I’m attempting to make practical use of it to promote Infoquake. And so in the last three weeks, my friend count has skyrocketed from about 75 to over 1,200. (In case you’re curious, you can visit my MySpace page.)

Screen shot of David Louis Edelman's MySpace pageHow am I adding so many friends so quickly? For a few days I was using a program called Friend Adder Professional to do the heavy lifting. With this program, you can actually send friends requests based on Google searchs of MySpace profiles, up to 500 a day. So one day as an experiment I sent friend requests to 500 people who listed Cryptonomicon as a favorite book. The next I did the same thing with Accelerando.

This might have continued indefinitely if my nice Jewish mother hadn’t instilled in me a strong sense of guilt. So I took a closer look at the MySpace Terms and Conditions and discovered that MySpace prohibits “any automated use of the system, such as using scripts to add friends or send comments or messages.” As well they should. So I stopped using the automated program and have continued adding friends manually.

But even without the automated bot, is adding friends for self-promotional purposes permitted by MySpace?

I’m no lawyer, but I can’t see why not. The MySpace Terms are somewhat ambiguous. They prohibit using profiles “in connection with any commercial endeavors except those that are specifically endorsed or approved by MySpace.com.” But later they prohibit “commercial activities and/or sales… such as contests, sweepstakes, barter, advertising, or pyramid schemes.” I don’t think my profile falls under any of those categories. Sure, there’s all kinds of information about Infoquake on my page, but there’s no exhortation to purchase. There are no links to online booksellers. The word “buy” isn’t even on the page.

(It’s also worth mentioning that the MySpace Terms and Conditions are full of strange provisos that everyone seems to ignore and MySpace has no intention of enforcing. Did you know that technically you’re not allowed to post any last names — even your own — on your profile?)

So assuming that self-promotion via MySpace is perfectly legal, the next obvious question: is this ethical?

After much thought, I’ve concluded that sending massive amounts of friend requests to strangers on MySpace is not spamming. What’s my rationale? I’m glad you asked:

  • Adding friends is a one-time permission-based activity. All you have to do if you never want to hear from me again is to click a single button and deny my friends request. If I accidentally try to add you twice, you can block any future communication with a single click.
  • The only content I’m communicating is a request to communicate. There’s no advertising in my profile photo or my profile name. If you’re interested in finding out who I am and what I’ve done, click on ahead. Otherwise, ignore away.
  • I’m targeting people with a professed interest in hard science fiction. The problem with e-mail spam is not that it’s unsolicited; the problem is that 98% of it doesn’t apply to me. If these unsolicited messages were about Richard K. Morgan’s latest novel instead of cheap home equity loans, I’d start looking at my junk mail folder again. So I’m trying to only add people whose profiles are on-topic. I’m not going to send a friend request to someone who has no interest in (or is openly hostile to) science fiction.
  • I answer all messages personally. Any questions or concerns about my book or my profile go straight to my e-mail inbox. I answer them personally, one at a time, without resorting to automated responses.
  • I’m trying to be completely transparent. Open up my profile, and I state upfront who I am and what I’m doing. I’m a science fiction author interested in getting the word out about my book. I’m soliciting feedback, and adjusting my tactics as I go to avoid pissing people off.
  • I really am trying to make friends. I’d love nothing more than to hold a nice, protracted dialogue with everyone on my friends list about the merits and shortcomings of Infoquake. I’ve been telling people to send me their thoughts on the book if they get around to reading it, because I really do want to know.

So the last remaining question that needs to be asked: is this style of promotion effective?

Surprisingly, the response to my MySpace friend adding spree has been overwhelmingly positive. I’ve received dozens of enthusiastic messages from people thanking me for bringing Infoquake to their attention. Some have even been inspired to go right out that minute and buy the book, or place an order on their favorite online bookseller. I’m sure some of these responses are just generic politeness — “thanks for the add, and good luck with your book!” — but it can’t all be just schmooze. (How can I tell? Well, for starters, every time I send a big batch of friend requests, my Amazon ranking jumps. Not by huge margins, mind you, but enough to suggest that I’ve inspired some purchases.)

I have received a few negative messages, of course. But rarely has anyone raised a serious objection to the method of promotion I’m using. Most of the naysayers just don’t have any interest in what I’m writing, which is perfectly all right with me. One or two have had off-the-wall political objections. (For the record: I’m sorry, but a six-month stint as a government contractor building useless intranets for the U.S. Army does not qualify me as an “imperialist crony.”)

The point I’m making is that the denizens of MySpace by and large seem to like Internet marketing — or at the very least, they don’t mind it. They’re used to it. The implications for the future of interactive marketing are there for the pickin’.

What remains to be seen, of course, is how effective this style of promotion is. Let’s say I spend an hour a day adding MySpace friends and thereby inspire a purchase every 24 hours. Is it worth the effort? Will there eventually be a snowball effect of friends recommending the book to friends? Where’s the cutoff between just spinning my wheels and effectively promoting my book?

I dunno.

So what do you think? Is this kind of MySpace promotion effective marketing, or simply spam?