Google+ ads on Facebook banned

Many years from now, when your kids have all grown up and shipped off to university, keeping in touch with you with the spawn of Twitter, you will be chatting with the rest of your mates about how the social networking landscape was like two decades ago. You will surely remember how Facebook made one of the world’s youngest billionaire, as well as the explosive battle between two titans – Facebook and Google+. Of course, the future has yet to be written, but would you fault Facebook for feeling so nervous about Google’s attempt at social networking that they have decided to ban a couple of user-made ads which promoted Google+.

It seems that Michael Lee Johnson, a self-employed Web marketing consultant who is currently based in the UK, ran a Facebook advertisement which asked Facebook users to gain him an invite into the exclusive Google+ club by adding him. Guess what – just one hour after the ad went live, Facebook allegedly disabled it, sending him this “nice” message instead which you can read in the extended post.

Your account has been disabled. All of your adverts have been stopped and should not be run again on the site under any circumstances. Generally, we disable an account if too many of its adverts violate our Terms of Use or Advertising guidelines. Unfortunately we cannot provide you with the specific violations that have been deemed abusive. Please review our Terms of Use and Advertising guidelines if you have any further questions.

Wow – has anyone else tried the same thing, and what kind of reaction did they receive from Facebook?

Edwin Kee
Categories: Computers, Web
Tags: Facebook, Google, Google+, social, social networks