Should You Use Auto Friend Adders in MySpace, et al?

In the world of social media, I understand that everyone wants to have a lot of “friends”. This has opened up a new world for software development that has the ability to add friends for you, and send messages to your friends without you having to do too much.

I admit, I even bought a friend adder product myself a few years ago. I knew of other musicians using it, and I was jealous of their friend numbers. But I just couldn’t bring myself to install it. My conscience wouldn’t let me, and it wasn’t just because auto friend adders are against the “Terms of Service” of most social media websites. In my opinion, using auto friend adders is basically gaming your friend numbers, and it just doesn’t feel kosher to me.

I know that everyone has other things they need to do with their time, like write songs and rehearse, but I believe that building your friend lists should be organic – like the way you make friends in real life.

My friend Carmelina uses MySpace as her main social media website, and she has amassed over 16,000 friends, and over 270,000 plays of her song “Mueve Las Caderas” (Move Your Hips) the old fashioned way. She has a full-time job, and plenty other things going on in her life, but she swears that she only dedicates an hour a day to making new friends, and connecting with old ones. Consistency and time management are her methods of choice, and they seem to be working. (By the way, I sing backup vocals in “Mueve Las Caderas”, which you can listen to here)

That’s just my two pennies, which was inspired by a great blog post by Andrew Dubber at New Music Strategies that gives his two pennies. Check out his blog here and don’t be afraid to chime in with your own opinion on this debate.

5 Responses to “Should You Use Auto Friend Adders in MySpace, et al?”

1. Veteran Status Says:
   August 8th, 2008 at 2:59 pm

   I recently deleted my MySpace account but I can totally understand what you are talking about. I too have an automatic friend adder, but I don’t use it to add friends. I’ve found that using it to send comments to alot of people and messages is useful.
   You know on a site like myspace you can have a huge amount of friends, but if they don’t visit your profile there isn’t much of a point. So periodically I would sent out comments (the same comment to each friend) to say hi and invite them to come and listen to the music. I felt that doing that was alright, not using it to add friends. Basically it helped me manage my time.

2. admin Says:
   August 8th, 2008 at 3:29 pm

   That makes perfect sense to me. Time is definitely a limited resource. It’s just the whole idea of automating friend selection that skeeves me out a bit. I want to believe that I was organically chosen to be someone’s friend. But I do love automating most other things online, so perhaps I shouldn’t complain too much 😉

3. Chuck Leifson Says:
   June 7th, 2009 at 11:16 pm

   I really Just wanted to say that I liked your blog! Thanks for keeping it on point!

4. MySpace Friend Says:
   June 20th, 2009 at 7:23 pm

   Hard to believe, but true it is LOL…. Thanks Again

5. friend train Says:
   October 26th, 2009 at 5:01 am

   One of the best sources of information I have read about this is right here.

   Keep going Thank you and all the best

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