Q: Sending lots of messages to facebook I'm doing a research for my masters degree and I found in a facebook a group of people (about 400 of them) that would be perfect to ask to fill my questionnaire. What I'm concerned about, is if I get marked as a spammer by facebook if I try sending 400 same messages to different people on facebook. Is that really an issue? What can I do to prevent myself from being banned? Maybe if I send those messages in small bulks every day (like 20 of them each day) I won't get flagged?

A: I'm not a Facebook expert at all, but:


*

*I doubt they would ban someone right away for a first suspicious move.

*If those 400 people are your friends, how about you just post it, simply, perhaps adding all of their names so they all get "beeped" by Facebook?

*You could create a group/event/whatever with a proper explanation and invite those 400 people into it. You can do that, right? And since it's just one action, it can't be considered spam. And the good thing with that is that it's less manual. You'll be able to see who you invited, who accepted and who declined, instead of trading messages. I think this is your best bet. Sending tons of messages is a little meh when you have a social network whose purpose is precisely to make reaching groups of people easier.
