Flickr Terminates Fake User, Red Passion
Now, this is a really interesting article. Should advertisers be using social networks to promote their products? Probably not - that’s not what social networkiong is about. Yet many businesses and broiadcasters use YouTube and Second Life to promote their wares.
In this move by Flickr, the membership’s primacy is established. There must be fantastic pressure to take advertising or viral marketing expecially if it is paid for. It’s a bold step and will probably in the future will mark an important moment in the history of online social networks.
An interesting update to our post earlier this week about fake Social Network user profiles, created for marketing purposes. A Flickr forum thread states that the Red Passion user (the one referenced in our post, representing a marketing campaign for a beverages company) has now been terminated. Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield made this comment in the thread a few days ago:
"Actually, I had just come across this article on the account. We will probably be deleting the account, but I’m curious and this is FlickrIdeas: what do YOU think about it? "
There is some interesting debate after Stewart’s comment - not dissimilar to the opinions voiced on R/WW, that Red Passion violates some ethical principles around social networks. But the upshot is that Flickr has now terminated the Red Passion account.
