D.I.Y.

Facebook’s ReverbNation Block Was Just “A Mistake”, But Serves As Reminder Of Larger Issue

image from www.norman.k12.ok.us Yesterday, ReverbNation told its tens of thousands of active artist users that Facebook had disabled RN links on their site. "This was a mistake in one of our automated systems for preventing spam," a Facebook spokesperson told Hypebot and by late in the day, the problem had been fixed. But the incident serves as a reminder of a hazard that accompanies the incredible potential of interconnected marketing – lack of control.


While not confirmed officially by either company, it's likely that Facebook's Spam Prevention System didn't differentiate between one or a few ReverbNation users abusing their system and thousands of others who did nothing wrong. To one degree or another, this could also happen to users of Nimbit, Bandcamp, Topspin, Bandzoogle or any other social marketing platform.

ReverbNation and others offer a myriad of essential tools, widgets and linking opportunities that extend the viral reach of artists in infinite ways. But every time a widget or link comes from or goes to another site, some control is lost and activity is measured and judged alongside others.

What can an artist or marketer to do?

Only on their own site can some control be maintained; and these incidents serve as reminders of the importance of creating a great one. But artist sites are mostly temples for the converted. New fans are found and existing fans often prefer to be communicated with via the much larger interconnected web that they have no control over. Even in the new music industry, no opportunity comes without risk.

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4 Comments

  1. The “own site” vs. social networks definitely isn’t an either/or debate. Your own site definitely allows you more control, full ownership of the mailing/contact list, and (at least in Bandzoogle’s case) a commission-free storefront.
    Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc, are great to enable discovery, seed information, and get some conversation started, and can be used as such. But in our (biased, but oh so right) opinion, the goal should be to redirect traffic to your own site as often as possible, for the previously mentioned reasons.

  2. The funny thing here is that ReverbNation is indeed responsible for spam, but not on Facebook. Their idiotic FanReach system is dumping dozens of messages into our Myspace inboxes every day, all starting with “Hello, Fan!” Guess what? Myspace auto-added you, and I’m not your fan. Does Myspace care? In post-layoffs sale mode, I doubt anyone there cares about anything. But the end result is that I’ve had to disable all message notifications and now I just ignore anything on Myspace completely. So they should care about the last thread of relevance being eaten alive by a predatory entity like ReverbNation.
    Bottom line same conclusion: Yes, it’s still important to have your own website. (And please don’t make it a glob of Flash that you never update again.)

  3. Bizzaro,
    I am sorry to hear that you are being flooded with unwanted messages from your friends who are using our FanReach integration with MySpace.
    But to be fair, its natural to expect Artists to want to send html messages to their friends on MySpace, now that they are able to do so. The fact that Artists can use the tool to ask their MySpace friends to opt-in to their own mailing lists is a feature that has has seen really strong interest, so that’s also driving the rash of email you are getting, no doubt.
    Its important to remember, however, that MySpace users can only get messages from those Artists with whom they are ‘friends’ (a relationship each MySpace user can control), and you always have the ability to block these messages or to un-friend the bands from whom you do not want messages. So the user is always in complete control.
    Also, while its true we built the tool that enables this communication, we aren’t the one creating and sending all of the messages to you – your friends are. Focusing criticism on us is a bit like blaming Google for any emails you get that come from a gmail.com domain. Please don’t shoot the messenger. 🙂
    That said, if you have any constructive suggestions on how we could improve the current system, we’re all ears and happy to listen.
    -Jed Carlson
    ReverbNation.com

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