widgets?

But then these double standards are only the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface of MySpace promotional accounts lurks a leviathan of terms of use violations, most particularly surrounding the issue of automating the adding of friends to your MySpace friends list.

Can MySpace --with a user base over 100 million strong-- be competitively used as a marketing tool without breaking the rules?

Quite frankly....? NO.

Even the very concept of marketing with MySpace is dangerously close to violating the MySpace Terms of Use Agreement. Section 8, paragraph 2, part 2 clearly prohibits "advertising to, or solicitation of, any Member to buy or sell any products or services through the MySpace Services".

However, the wording does leave you some wiggle room. You don't have to actually advertise your products or services on your MySpace profile. You can, instead, link your MySpace profile to your website advertising your products and services and then just kind of... *ahem*... plug your site (heavily) on MySpace. Right?

Of course, the notion that MySpace was not meant to be used for promotional purposes doesn't hold much water anyway when you take into consideration that MySpace is widely known as a vehicle to promote bands. So then the question arises, if Joe Guitar and the Gray Tones can use MySpace to hype their band (and ultimately sell CDs) why can't I use MySpace to sell my blue widgets?

But then these double standards are only the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface of MySpace promotional accounts lurks a leviathan of terms of use violations, most particularly surrounding the issue of automating the adding of friends to your MySpace friends list.

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paragraph 2, part 2 clearly prohibits "advertising to, or solicitation of, any Member to buy or sell any products or services through the MySpace Services".

However, the wording does leave you some wiggle room. You don't have to actually advertise your products or services on your MySpace profile. You can, instead, link your MySpace profile to your website advertising your products and services and then just kind of... *ahem*... plug your site (heavily) on MySpace. Right?

Of course, the notion that MySpace was not meant to be used for promotional purposes doesn't hold much water anyway when you take into consideration that MySpace is widely known as a vehicle to promote bands. So then the question arises, if Joe Guitar and the Gray Tones can use MySpace to hype their band (and ultimately sell CDs) why can't I use MySpace to sell my blue widgets?

But then these double standards are only the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface of MySpace promotional accounts lurks a leviathan of terms of use violations, most particularly surrounding the issue of automating the adding of friends to your MySpace friends list.

MySpace profile. You can, instead, link your MySpace profile to your website advertising your products and services and then just kind of... *ahem*... plug your site (heavily) on MySpace. Right?

Of course, the notion that MySpace was not meant to be used for promotional purposes doesn't hold much water anyway when you take into consideration that MySpace is widely known as a vehicle to promote bands. So then the question arises, if Joe Guitar and the Gray Tones can use MySpace to hype their band (and ultimately sell CDs) why can't I use MySpace to sell my blue widgets?

But then these double standards are only the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface of MySpace promotional accounts lurks a leviathan of terms of use violations, most particularly surrounding the issue of automating the adding of friends to your MySpace friends list.

es doesn't hold much water anyway when you take into consideration that MySpace is widely known as a vehicle to promote bands. So then the question arises, if Joe Guitar and the Gray Tones can use MySpace to hype their band (and ultimately sell CDs) why can't I use MySpace to sell my blue widgets?

But then these double standards are only the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface of MySpace promotional accounts lurks a leviathan of terms of use violations, most particularly surrounding the issue of automating the adding of friends to your MySpace friends list.

widgets?

But then these double standards are only the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface of MySpace promotional accounts lurks a leviathan of terms of use violations, most particularly surrounding the issue of automating the adding of friends to your MySpace friends list.

MySpace Whore Trains
It all began when MySpace resource sites started sprouting up all over the net providing a means to create ginormous MySpace friends lists very quickly via special automated scripts. These scripts eventually became known as (*chuckle*) 'whore trains'.

This soon gave away to the ability to create your own whore trains by copy-and-pasting a ready-made whore train script and sending it out via the MySpace bulletin system.

Of course, these services were all provided free of charge. No money in that. It wasn't long before someone thought, "Hey! Why not sell a program that does the same thing?"

And, sure enough, along came MySpace friend adder software which you could actually buy, install on your computer and use it from there to jam up your friends list faster than you can say 'add me'.

But wait, that's not all.. You can now even join affiliate programs and earn a commission when you generate sales for these friend adder programs.

As of this writing, if you do a search in Google for "myspace whore train", you'll find automated friend adder scripts as far as the eye can se