Facebook Sent Cease and Desist to uSocial

I previously wrote an article entitled: Feel Lonely? Want to Buy New Friends on Facebook?, and clearly, now Facebook want to put an end to the sale of friends’ activities by sending Cease and Desist letters to uSocial, an Australia-based company for the selling of Facebook friends and fans for money.

According to BBC, “Facebook sent Cease and Desist letters to uSocial claiming that the way the marketing firm operates violates its rights by sending spam, using web tools to harvest pages, getting login names and by accessing accounts that did not belong to the marketing firm.”

The end result is, uSocial defended itself against Facebook’s claims, saying that it did not spam users or use web tools to gather information about profiles…However, in response to the legal letters, uSocial said it would delete the login information it had collected and broadly stop offering to sell Facebook friends.

However, uSocial still in the business of gaming Facebook. Although the service of “buy targeted Facebook friends” is temporarily unavailable, but the purchase of Facebook fans is still ongoing, see the below picture.

As you know, Facebook has became a popular site, and thus vigorously enforces and protects the site integrity and one of the ways they do is the drafting of the statement of rights and responsibilities. To enhance the safety use of Facebook, they’ve included the following commitments to the users, 5. You will not solicit login information or access an account belonging to someone else…and in the section of Registration and Account Security, i.e. 2. You will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain.

So, the real question is, will Facebook allow the selling of fans as long as it is not for the purpose of commercial gain. In the other end, will Facebook allow the selling of friends / fans provided the information about profiles are not being solicited, harvested or accessed by any of the marketing firm?

Without any doubt, there will be a growing trend of acquiring Facebook fans across the Web. A recent freelancing job postings showed that the growing demand of Facebook fans by a number of Facebook Pages and Facebook Wall is extremely concerned that the users are eventually be confused as a result. In addition, are the following Facebook fans acquiring activities violate Facebook’s terms of use, in the scenario that the monetary incentive is lower than $250, and solely to reward an online worker’s effort?

Example 1: http://www.freelancer-job.com/jobs/need-to-get-1000-fans-on-a-facebook-fan-page-odesk/, accessed November 22, 2009

Need to Get 1,000 Fans on a Facebook Fan Page – oDesk

Hours Billed: 57

Example 2: http://www.freelancer-job.com/jobs/need-300-us-fans-to-join-dating-niche-facebook-page-by-onyxgaia/, accessed November 22, 2009

Need 300 US fans to join dating niche facebook page by onyxgaia

I need 300 REAL US fans to join a dating niche Facebook page Fans must be Legit and from the US(I will check) Fans must be signed up within 2 weeks. PAYMENT 1/2 Payment once you drive 150 fans… (Budget: $30-250, Jobs: Facebook, Social Networking)

Overall, perhaps there is no clear-cut answer whether it is legally at fault because of the selling of Facebook fans as there has never been a case like that before. The problem lies probably in the fact more and more Facebook Pages are hunting for more fans, whether or not is it because of the minimum 25-fans requirement for custom username, or because of the show-off factor. We should only sigh if that is the reason…

Tagged as: Cease and Desist, Facebook Page, uSocial