MURKETING

All of my “friends” are going to be marketers

Has anybody started a Facebook backlash yet? I see Newsweek is speculating on whether Facebook can hang onto its “cool.” I’m in no position to judge such things, but I will pass along this one anecdotal observation.

A few months ago, I joined Facebook. This in itself is a bad sign, but then again I’m a journalist who covers consumer culture, and in the course of snooping around on something or other, I basically had to join. I did just enough with my account to make it clear who I was, and why I was there, and then got on with whatever I was working on.

Soon I started to get friend requests. I would accept, log out, and get back to work. That has continued. I think I have 30 friends at this point, but I’d have to log on to check, and I don’t want to bother. Here’s what’s new:

Recently, an increasing number of the friend requests are from marketing people. Consultants, ad agency folk, the like. So far, they’ve mostly been from people who I actually have interviewed or am friends with or have some other connection to. But yesterday I got one from a guy I really don’t know, he’s just a marketer type who has pitched me in the past. I can’t decide whether to accept. I think this is a bad sign.

I guess it’s inevitable that this kind of thing will happen, and that it will happen, in particular, to me. And I have nothing against Facebook, which seems like it might be worth spending time on, if I had any time to spend. (That’s why I can’t decide whether to accept this guy’s “friend”ship, because I’m holding onto the possibility that I may actually find Facebook useful at some point.) And at least Facebook doesn’t give me the same instant, throbbing headache that MySpace did.

But as an observer of marketers, and of trendiness, I would say that there may be a familiar pattern here, following Second Life and MySpace. First there’s an audience. Then the marketers (and the journalists and the trend-watchers) flood in. And then there’s a backlash. Often led by the marketers, the journalists, and the trend-watchers. So we’ll see.

Update: Mike Arauz answers “Yes. The Facebook backlash is now underway. (And like all respectable backlashes these days, I’m sure we will see the backlash-to-the-backlash before most Facebook users have even had a chance to update their status.)” I think is parenthetical point there is good. Here’s his whole post.
And: AdPulp weighs in, and notes earlier chatter of Facebook fatigue.
Plus: More related links in the comments. Thanks all.