Facebook limitations -- don't be too friendly

Besides the fact that Facebook changed its Terms of Service and will continue to keep the data that you post, even after you delete your Facebook account ...

Check out THIS STORY about this guy, whose account was disabled for adding too many new friends.

From his article:

I am not a shy man. I have been on this earth more than 50 years and in public relations for 30 years. Needless to say, I know a lot of people. Add to this regular media appearances, an aggressive speaking schedule, and the fact that mine is the first name on the door of the largest entertainment PR firm in the world and it’s safe to say a lot of people know me, too.

So I made friends. And when you make friends on Facebook, you get to see your friends’ friends. If I were home watching television or had a spare moment at my desk, I would ask people I knew, and interesting friends of friends, to add me as their friend. At the same time, literally hundreds of people were inviting me to be their friend—some I knew and many who I didn’t but I saw no reason to say no. After all, who doesn’t want a friend?

As I was adding friends, I would occasionally get a warning from the Facebook gods that I was engaging in abusive behavior and potentially violating their terms of service. But none of these warnings mentioned how I was being abusive. I looked at their terms of service and saw nothing about adding friends and decided to ignore these warnings. Last week, as I was inviting new friends at a vigorous rate, my Facebook page suddenly crashed.

His attempt to communicate with people at Facebook was cursorily responded to; he didn't receive attention until one of his new contacts that he made in a business setting offered to talk to one of his contacts, who happened to be a Facebook employee.

Apparently, in the web services/social networking crowd, it's still who you know, not just what.

[UPDATE 02-18-2009]
This just in from the Facebook team; I noticed it when I signed in via a browser and not on my Bb:

Terms of Use Update
Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised. For more information, visit the Facebook Blog.

If you want to share your thoughts on what should be in the new terms, check out our group Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.