Complaint Review: facebook.com - Internet

Hi,

Your account was disabled because your behavior on the site was identified as harassing or threatening to other people on Facebook. Prohibited behavior includes, but is not limited to:

Sending friend requests to people you don't know

Regularly contacting strangers through unsolicited Inbox messages

Soliciting others for dating or business purposes

After reviewing your situation, we have determined that your behavior violated

Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. You will no longer be able

to use Facebook. This decision is final and cannot be appealed.

Please note that for technical and security reasons, we will not provide you

with any further details about this decision.

Thanks,

The Facebook Team

The above is all I received back when I inquired as to why my personal profile was suddenly, without warning, disabled about 1 month ago. Prior to this, there was no reason given. No explanations, no email, nothing.

For a social network, that sounds surprisingly unsocial, doesn't it?

I'm still trying to find out why their administrators decided to throw me off the Facebook train. Was it my high frequency of posts? Was it my unsolicited emails to people that I had just recently met?

Many people that I had referred to facebook, including myself spent money on games etc.. and this is absolutely ridiculous. 

I'm taking it all in stride, although my friends are panicking:

"I miss your posted articles!" one of my friends instant messaged me.

"Can't you just open up another account?" another one asked via Twitter.

I suppose I could do that. Just use a different e-mail address, reconnect with my friends and be done with it, but out of principal I'm staying off Facebook.

Why? Because after assessing the frequency of my posts and the influence I've had in bringing friends, colleagues and bosses onto the network, I came to the conclusion that I deliver more value to Facebook than Facebook delivers to me.

Sure, I'm just one of 30 million or 40 million unique visitors. But within my social circle, I'd curate conversations, share hundreds of industry articles within my network and create multiple photo albums for my family and I to enjoy. In fact, the only reason I want my account enabled again is to gain back access to the pictures I took with my wife over our last vacation.

Which brings up another point: Facebook became a host for my digital life. And now, it's being held hostage for some reason unbeknown to me. That in itself is a tad bit troublesome, don't you think?

I've created multiple page views, over-indexed on time spent on their social network, and extended the duration of my friends on the site by introducing them to emerging Facebook plugins like video chat. I almost feel as though I should receive a bi-monthly check and benefits from Mark Zuckerberg himself. OK, how about deferred stock options instead? I'm easy to please.

Ultimately, I have learned everything lives and dies by how one treats its customers. Much like brick-and-mortar businesses, understanding who your best customers are will guarantee their loyalty. And analytics are the key to figuring out who those are. My question is how can a company that collects so much data on its user base be unable to segment its power users?

If Facebook tracked and measured the activity of members such as myself, I don't think I would've lost my account. More so, it would have kept this blogger in check. Had I received any form of communications, it may have still left me upset but it certainly would've mitigated my frustrations. Now here I am armed with a keyboard and an internet connection -- our 21st century version of the adage the pen is mightier than the sword.

Now all I want is access to my albums and to know why they killed my account without speaking with me first. As an advertiser, I've encouraged clients for half a decade to run campaigns through Facebook. I thought it treated people better than this.

I know Facebook has its hands full, especially with the phishing scams it's been up against. My account had recently been hacked and the hacker had contacted my friends pretending to be me. Last week, one of my colleagues was spammed via a live Facebook IM conversation; a hacker took control of his friend's account and attempted to solicit my colleague for money. Like I said, data management and CRM will either keep Facebook as a popular destination for social networking, or doom them as a company that never took security or its customers seriously.