I wrote an article, several days ago that was re-circulated a few tens of times online. I tried to capture a little bit of the angst being felt by facebookers who had been banned or suspended while simply doing their thing in the Facebook. One might define a Facebooker as someone who spends more than 90 minutes a day in facebook and who probably has it on their cell phone too.

To a lot of people this is really a non-issue, much to do about nothing. But to the 100 Million who inhabit the fastest growing social network and the several tens of millions who now spend more time inside facebook than around the rest of the internet, this is quite a serious topic. You volunteer to send out 400 invitations to your facebook friends on behalf of your boss and your boss smiles and you hear him say, wow Jim is a real go getter. You can banned after sending only 60 messages and yo partner, your now in trouble…

If you are one of those several tens of millions of users who have *lost* a facebook friend or relative, you know what I mean. And if you are one of those unfortunates who have been banned or have an ongoing suspension that appears to be lasting forever, then the topic is near and dear to your heart.

Mom & Pop facebook marketing operations frequently lose their profiles when they are caught outright. Facebook has an engine in the background that watches for what is considered abnormal behavior. It has been tracking and analyzing normal user behavior inside Facebook for quite some time now, so figuring out activity that is not the norm and running that past its comparison engine that has 100 Million samples to compare with must be a thing of real beauty.

In that article, I wrote a little about the facebook warning messages which I and many others consider quite bland. I detailed in vivid language that I personally felt that for such an important thing, they facebook could have done a little better in terms of bringing the urgency of the situation to their members.

Ignorance of the Law is no excuse and in the case of Facebook, a faceless engine in the background deems certain activity looks like spam according to their filters and suddenly you are out of there. But here is some detail on activities that you should NOT do, so as to stay out of trouble with Facebook.

Nudity. Is it art or pornography? Want to test the fine line? Well, if you want to Facebook is a great place to rationalize this sort of thing. If they deem that picture of your ex was not **Art** then art you go, my friend. Yeah, I wouldn’t suggest you test them in this regard with anything less than a well recognized international art piece – lets say something of the stature of a “Mona Lisa” Oddly enough, writing to too many people before they accept you as a friend – looks like spam. Writing too many times in a short period of time on group walls. Stay under 30 per day and don’t test that number to seriously.

Creating a group inside Facebook with the Facebook name/word in it – its trademarked you know. Creating a website outside of facebook with the facebook name in it. Hijacking the accounts of others – only a hacker would do this one Using an image that you do not have the authority to use – tens of thousands do this. Using the facebook email like its twitter. Surprise it’ s not, there is a chat facility for that and its what facebook now suggests you use.

We see two forms of general problems that people fall prey to just before getting banned or suspended. One of them, which includes posting obvious un-artistic nude pictures and hacking etc., is a pretty blatant activity on the part of the user and the reasons for getting banned are obvious enough.

Generally, it would appear that there are two classes of evil that can get one banned or suspended from facebook. Nudity and stealing images and other such types of activity is one class of activity.

You can invite 500 perfect facebook strangers to be your friend but not in the same hour or day. Over two weeks or more would be perfect, but not 1 day.

Read the Terms of Conditions and if you get suspended or banned there is an email where you can try to plead your case. I suspect they get thousands of pleading emails daily, so don’t expect a quick answer. One to three weeks may be the norm for a response.

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