Automated invitations (such as those sent by various social networking sites to a member's entire address book) should
not be posted to Shortmystery. If an invitation is unintentionally sent to the list, I will place the sending member's account on
moderated status to prevent further invitations from reaching the list until the member addresses the problem independently.
1 comment:
Besides the headaches Gerald touches upon, there's practical reasons for avoiding most social networking sites (not counting that the 2 most popular, MySpace and FaceBook, are designed for kids and are used to 'Catch a Predator'.)
I received an invitation from a well-known mystery writer to join a networking site. What I didn't realize when I signed up, the damn thing raided my address book and sent 'invites' in my name to everyone in it.
I had to send out messages to business contacts, editors, and past girlfriends to ignore the invitation 'to be my friend'. It was highly embarrassing.
It took forever to get my name removed from the site. Only afterwards, did I wonder if the invitation from my colleague came about in the same way by the social site raiding his address book.
Additional Comments
For networking sites specifically for writers and their fans, look at RedRoom.com and AuthorNation.com . For mystery fiction, there's CrimeSpace.
One of the oldest and most respected networking sites is LinkedIn.com although it has a different thrust and purpose. It's much more business oriented and you'll find many kinds of professionals including artists, accountants, and authors.
Whatever you decide, don't allow any site near your address book. Remember, you may have more address books than you think. Not only may you have contacts in Outlook, Entourage, Apple Mail, or Thunderbird, you probably have contacts stored in AOL, Yahoo, Google mail, and HotMail. Given a chance, the generalized networking sites will raid your address book(s).
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