Posted by: admin : Category: 
Facebook has become so big — and so popular among the highly coveted
youth demographic — that it was only a matter of time before someone
tried to take advantage of the service to gain access to the millions
of young people who populate the site.
It appears that’s just what has happened, after the publisher of a
series of college guidebooks was exposed trying to build a massive
mailing list of incoming freshmen around the country by creating phony
Facebook groups. College students flock to the class groups as a way of communicating with others.
The kerfuffle started when Brad Ward, electronic communications
coordinator at Butler University’s admissions department, noticed a
weird trend. Over 300 “Class of 2013″ Facebook groups
were popping up for various colleges, but many of the admins for the
groups shared the same name, and weren’t affiliated with the schools.
Ward enlisted some help from his commenters and put together a collaborative Google Doc spreadsheet to track the similarities at the various college groups.
After some sleuthing, Ward discovered that a company which produces
college guidebooks with the unfortunate name “College Prowler” has
hired interns to create the groups, in an effort to gain access to the estimated 1 million incoming class of 2013 students across the country. Ward wrote:
for 8-10 months, (even a few years), maybe friending everyone and
posing as an incoming student. Think of the data collection. The
opportunities down the road to push affiliate links. The opportunity
to appear to be an ‘Admin’ of Your School Class of 2013. The chance to message alumni down the road. The list of possibilities goes on and on and on.
As
the furor grew, someone identifying themselves as Luke Skurman, the CEO
of College Prowler, posted a comment on Ward’s blog admitting that,
“College Prowler has been directly or indirectly involved with the
creation of multiple Class of 2013 groups. The original purpose was to
use these groups as a way to inform students that they can access a
free guide about their new college on our site.” The person identifying
themself as Skurman added:
having a marketing strategy using social networking sites (like
Facebook) is something that is necessary to be effective in our
business. We do pride ourselves on being forward thinking and
aggressive. In this instance, in its current form, we have crossed the
line and to reiterate, we will be removing our administrator privileges from all of these 2013 groups immediately.
So far, Facebook has not commented on the issue, but one would
presume that the company isn’t keen to see the site turned into a
nefarious marketing vehicle designed to exploit unsuspecting college
students.
From Portfolio.com: Tech Observer by Sam Gustin
Related Links:
- Rumors of a Facebook Music Store
- The Government is Watching You - on Facebook
- New Facebook Group: “Join the Class Action Lawsuit…Against Facebook.”
Source: portfolio.com
