This is not directed at any one person … but specifically at the entire groups of people who, come festival season, literally spam their friends on Orkut/LinkedIn/FaceBook/Hi5/[put-your-fav-social-network-here] with messages of “Happy Diwali”, “Id Muburak”, “Happy new year”, etc, etc.

I got about 50-75 messages with “Happy Diwali” over the last week on my Orkut scrapbook. I call it festive-spam.

This is not cool!

I mean, I know their intentions are honourable, etc. But my take on bulk-messaging is simple … don’t send it!

Send a greeting/message only if you would have done the same through postal mail (archies/hallmark card) or a phone call (SMS’s are included in my category of festive-spam).

On my birthday, I used to get phonecalls or birthday cards … this tradition continues into cyberspace. Each birthday card, ecard, email, SMS, Orkut scrap I received … I made sure I replied to; personally and independently (no “Thank you for the wishes everyone” styled replies from me).

But of the dozens of diwali wishes I got, I haven’t replied to any one of them. It is spam .. it took the author a few seconds to type and send, but the rest of us have to deal with reading it, hitting the reply button, typing something (even if it’s just copy/pasting a bulk reply).

social networking spam nuisance

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