As I've mentioned in the past, I have been helping plan my class' 10-year high school reunion.  So what would any tech-savvy person do who is trying to find 500 classmates?  Search for these people on MySpace and Facebook!  Isn't that what these social networking sites are for anyway?  There seems to have been a surge in people on Facebook that I'd been finding lately and since I hate MySpace's interface I started using Facebook to find my classmates and hit them up about the reunion. 

On Wednesday, as part of my reunion planning tasks I started messaging people who graduated with us (according to their profile) who hadn't yet accepted my Friend Request.  I had already managed to message everyone who graduated with us who already was on my Friend List no problem.  Because of the speed in which I was messaging these people Facebook's algorithms said that I was spamming people.  After a few warnings, my account automatically became disabled.  All references to me on Facebook (including me as class officer of our high school group I created there) were nowhere to be found.  When I try to login I only get a link to some FAQs about abuse on Facebook.  I have sent an e-mail to warning@facebook.com and appeals@facebook.com and disabled@facebook.com.  Truth be told, after reading what I have on Google about Facebook's customer support for such things and not being given an e-mail address directly to directly contact them I seriously doubt that a.) a human will contact me back much less actually READ my e-mails and  b.) I will get my account reinstated.

All of this is really a shame, the response or lack thereof from Facebook on not just my issue but others' as well.  i really like Facebook.  It's been a great tool for me thus far.  The fact that it is a great site and very easily integrated on lots of stuff on the web these days and that it is a better and easier site to navigate than MySpace made it a no-brainer for me to use.  But it looks like my problem isn't an isolated incident.  As much as I love Facebook I'm hesitant to create a new account using another e-mail address simply because of principle.  I also don't want to go through the trouble of having to add all my friends (and classmates) back and stuff.  So for now, I'm headed back to MySpace to try to contact the majority of my classmates.  At least there my account won't automatically be disabled.

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