Things went from innocent to ugly fast on Facebook

Yet another "life lesson" for those who want to use Facebook to market their business.

On Facebook, there is an application where you can automatically add content to your Facebook profile.  They’re called "bumper stickers" and you can search by keywords to add your chosen images to your Profile.

Users are able to upload their owncontent to this application…. and what started as a collection of sweet/funny/amusing has quickly turned ugly and the random images are positively repulsive.  We’re not talking "soft core’ images.

On the non-facebook specific application Photobucket, it is relatively easy to report offensive content… however, the bumper sticker application on Facebook doesn’t have the same safe guard feature.  As a result, if you have activated this application on your profile AND if someone clicks on "see all stickers"…. well, your Facebook profile has just become an official "pornography gateway" type drug.

This illustrates why it’s important to stay "plugged in" to your chosen social networking site.  The question remains how long with Facebook allow this app to run on the popular networking site.  On the one hand, it’ s a great way to easily create your own ‘bumpersticker"  but on the other, you need to be aware of how this app is being used by others.

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Comments

3 Responses to “Things went from innocent to ugly fast on Facebook”

  1. Dan Anton on November 7th, 2007 3:01 pm

    always a fine line between complete freedom for the community and where some things aren’t a good idea, because people will always abuse the system…sounds pretty bad when a profile turns pornographic; maybe some filters or just being on top of it personally like you stated will help

  2. Levon Guiragossian on November 20th, 2007 3:40 pm

    The widget that you make reference to as the bumpersticker app - where can it be downloaded from?

  3. http://www.abb4.com/ on January 7th, 2008 8:44 am

    If something is cool and successful on the web porn finds a way to expoit it for their use. Which is really annoying since those that are looking for porn are not looking in facebook! At least I hope not.
    Photobucket is a great tool and hopefully those at Facebook will just rewrite the app to include some safeguards to ensure users of this feature do not start pimping for the porn sites unknowingly.

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