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Jakarta Post

Online advertising irks Facebook users in Jakarta

As seen on Facebook: Ads on Facebook are displayed on a computer monitor on Sunday

Novia D. Rulistia (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Mon, May 30, 2011

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Online advertising irks Facebook users in Jakarta

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span class="inline inline-right">As seen on Facebook: Ads on Facebook are displayed on a computer monitor on Sunday. More Facebook users are turning to the social networking site for business purposes, a trend that some users in Jakarta consider annoying. JP

Several Facebook users in Jakarta say they feel annoyed by users who have turned the social medium into a commercial site.

“It has become more like an online shopping site,” Facebook user Yulyani Meilia Suhinto said.

She said that other users were trying to sell products, such as shoes, bags and clothes by tagging her to the images had bothered her — a lot. “I once bought the stuff, but I would never do that again as the advertisers then tagged me again and again,” the 27-year old said.

She said that she had removed the photos or used the hide option to avoid the advertisements.

Being the second biggest Facebook user with more than 31 million people registered has made Indonesia a lucrative spot for online business, but at the same time there were many cases of people who have fallen victim to the misuse of the social networking site.

Recently, the Facebook account of a member of the House of Representatives, Agun Gunandjar Sudarsa, was hacked by a seller of laptops and tablets.

Agun then wrote on his new Facebook account that some of the victims had transferred money to a bank account that did not belong to him.

Former Constitutional Court chief Jimly Asshidiqie also had his Facebook account hacked and used by a computer salesman to sell the products.

Another Jakartan, Dwi Tupani, said that she even removed a friend from her friend list because of unwanted photo tagging.

“She was my junior high school friend. We were not that close actually, but then she started tagging me photos over and over, trying to sell plastic kitchen and home products. So I decided to just remove her,” Tupani said.

As she did not like online shopping, she found it irritating to be tagged in photos of merchandise she knew she would not buy. “And that is just trashing my wall,” she said, adding that she also reported it as spam.

Tupani said that to avoid another bad experience with photo tagging, she set her Facebook’s account as restricted.

Sharing similar experiences with the two, Otto Ferdinand Sianturi, 28, said that he was bothered with the tagging, and almost fell into the trap of online fraud.

“I saw on my time line that my friend was tagged with a photo of my dream notebook, I was instantly attracted to it and immediately found out more about it,” he said.

After contacting the person, Otto said that he was suspicious because the seller asked him to first transfer the money and refused to meet him to make payment.

“I checked with my friend, just to determine that he did not know the seller, and he turned out to be an impostor,” he said.

He said he has rarely opened his Facebook since and has ignored every commercial photo tag.

Apart from photo tagging, some users even had their Facebooks accounts hacked and used to sell various kinds of products.

Marketing strategist Nukman Luthfie said that it was impolite to do business using a personal Facebook account.

“The relationship in Facebook is friendship, not business. Facebook has provided a fan page to do whatever activities you want, including business,” he said.

“Removing the photos or the person who tagged the photos or reporting it as spam is highly recommended to keep your Facebook safe.”

In its statement of rights and responsibilities, Facebook states that to ensure the safety and protect other people’s rights, Facebook demands users not send or otherwise post unauthorized commercial communications on Facebook.

It also demands users not engage in unlawful multi-level marketing, such as pyramid schemes.

The agreements also states that users will not tag other users or send email invitations to non-users without their consent.

Indonesia has the second-largest a number of Facebook users with more than 31 million people registered, far below the United States, where there are 146 million users.

The third-largest number of Facebook users is in the United Kingdom, with 29 million people, followed by Turkey with 24 million and France with 20 million users.

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