I set up MySpace accounts for several businesses with the intent of promoting them, in part, with social networking. After 3 months of constant porn spamming I killed all of the MySpace accounts. I have accounts on several other social networks, Livejournal, Spaces, Facebook, Blogspot, just to name a few. I have never gotten so much in-your-face porn spam on any other site.

When the net was still an infant, back in the USENET days, there was lots of porn, but you had to go looking for it, It wasn’t hard to find, It was actually rather easy to find. It wasn’t however in-your-face. Okay, when the web was introduced if you went to a porn site you got tons of pop-ups and the like, but you where already looking for it. Then there was the email porn spam, that got real annoying real fast. That was reaching out to everyone, but more often that not it was text only.

What I don’t get is why they spend so much time and money on social network sites. If you are looking for porn its easy to find. If you are not looking for it, and you are doing something in particular, will you stop what you are doing when you get spammed with it? Not me. If I wanted to find it I would go looking for it. If I come across it in a place I conduct business, I look for a new neighborhood to conduct business.

It’s a business, I get that. It’s advertising, I get that too. I even get that a LOT of people use the social networking sits to hook up, in the eyes of the porn industry, that is a prime market space. What I don’t get is the blanket spamming that they do. I haven’t seen it on other social networking sites. Why on MySpace? What is the fascination with doing it there. Are they paying MySpace to not shut them down? There is a report as spam feature. I used it a lot. I have gotten friend invites and the account is closed before I view it. Why MySpace?

I guess the only important thing for me is that I don’t play in that neighborhood any more. There are plenty of other business friendly streets to walk and enjoy the view.

~FBJ