Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way you could easily ignore/block event invitations from a specific person? Today, Mari Smith directly involves me in a piece on her blog called ”
Facebook Event Invitations – Unsubscribe Option?” that goes right to this point.
THE BROKENNESS OF FACEBOOK
Here’s the thing… I don’t know Mari. That I can recall, I’ve never met her. I’ve never attended any of her online events, nor had I read her blog prior to this morning. Yet inside of Facebook I received the occasional message from her about upcoming events she was doing, none of which were honestly of interest t me. After her latest message about an upcoming event, I couldn’t understand why I was receiving her message. Naturally I tried to see if she was one of my Facebook friends, but of course Facebook’s <expletive deleted> brokenness didn’t give me that answer:
I checked my Facebook Groups, too, to see if I had subscribed to any group that Mari coordinated. No luck there. So having no clue why I was receiving these messages, I sent her a Facebook message asking to please remove me from her distribution list, as it seemed to me that somehow I had wound up on some kind of list or group inside of Facebook.
Now, I’m glad I was polite, since my message to her wound up as a screen capture in her blog post today…. (goes back to my mantra “Never put online anything you wouldn’t want to appear on the front page of the New York Times.“)
She wrote back a polite reply, but as she notes in her post, there is no easy way to do what I requested inside of Facebook. There is no way to “Block Event Invitations from this person” or “Unsubscribe”. You can, of course, “un-friend” the person, but what if you don’t want to go that far? What if you only want to stop receiving their event invitations in your inbox? (And what if, as far as you can tell, they aren’t one of your friends?)
Mari says:
With all due respect to Dan, I’m sure he doesn’t know if he had just RSVP’d NO or clicked the Remove from My Events link, he would not receive any further emails.
Actually, I did know this, but it only solves the issue for that particular event. If I RSVP NO or remove the event, I will not receive any more email notices about that event… but in my case, because I couldn’t figure out why I was getting these email invites in the first place, I wanted to not receive any further email messages about any events. (Which sounds harsh, but keep in mind I didn’t understand why I was getting these… see below…)
Mari’s absolutely right that a “Block Event Invitations from this person” feature is necessary. If you have someone who you would like to keep as a contact in Facebook, but you are just tired of getting their event invites, you should be able to block their event invites, just as you can block application invites from a user.
She also suggests to organizers to create a “DO NOT INVITE” list, although I would suggest this should perhaps go the other way… create an “INVITE” list to which you add people – and then remove the ones who no longer want to receive your invitations. That might make it easier when you are creating an event invite.
MYSTERY SOLVED
Now I did figure out why I was receiving Mari’s invites. It’s simple, really…
She is one of my Facebook “friends”!
Yes, indeed, even though a search of my Friends in Facebook tells me “You have no friends named “mari smith”.”, there she was in the S’s when I manually paged through all my Facebook friends.
So that’s why I was receiving her event invites… because I had allowed her to do so… by at some point approving her friend request.
As I mentioned above, as far as I can recall, Mari and I have never met or interacted online. (Apologies, Mari, if we have and I simply don’t remember.) I’m also very definitely NOT one to simply approve a friend request. I usually don’t approve one unless: 1) I actually know the person; or 2) some combination of the following: a) when I look at their profile they look like someone interesting for me to follow; b) they write a very compelling personal message in their friend request; and c) they are also someone who is connected to a number of other people I know.
So at some point in the past something caused me to approve her friendship request. Perhaps it was last year when I was doing a lot more with Facebook and was actually following a great number of people through their status updates, the mini-feed and such. I don’t know, but in any event, there was no mystery involved here (other than why Facebook doesn’t make it easy to find people listed in your own Friends list!)….
FACEBOOK, CAN YOU FIX THIS, PLEASE?
A couple of lessons out of this for me:
1. DON’T RELY ON FACEBOOK’S SEARCH – If you want to find out if someone is a friend on Facebook, click on Friends on the top of the page, then the “Everyone” tab, and then manually page through your friends list (alphabetically sorted by last name).
2. FACEBOOK NEEDS A “BLOCK EVENT INVITATIONS” ACTION – I agree with Mari that this action would great to have for the times when you don’t want to completely remove someone as a friend but you do want to stop receiving their event invitations. (Although I think that an email exchange like Mari and I had is also a great step because otherwise the organizer may still think you were invited and not understand why you haven’t responded.)
What do you think? Does Facebook need this functionality?
P.S. And my apologies, Mari, for not realizing that we were connected on Facebook…
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Dan, as I just posted on Mari’s blog – actually I know of you both online and both of you deliver great content.
I actually use the ‘remove from my event’ function, but I have to say that I have never used the events function in Facebook as I don’t want to be seen an annoyance to people as I know some of my connections in Facebook are ‘weak’ versus those in LinkedIn.
My blogs, podcasts and my newsletter is where I focus my active sharing of events as I know people are there as they have opted in to access the information I share.
If I continually get invitations or messages or apps from people which don’t connect for me – I do delete the person I am afraid.
I consider it a bit like unsubscribing from a newsletter if it’s no longer providing what I am looking for.
Perhaps that is harsh and I have to say I don’t do it often, but I only have so much mental bandwidth.
I completely agree with Dan. There should be a ‘block invite” option.
I JUST did i search to find out if this was possible and this is how I came across
Dan’s page regarding this.
there are some people that I am friends with that consistantly send invites a lot
of them on a weekly basis. Asking to be removed politely from their invite list seems
to become a bigger issue than one woudl think it would be- case in point; Marj’s rant on her page.
constatnly having to click ‘attend, not attend or remove event, becomes a hassel.
it shoudl be set up just as the applications- you can decline app. invites from a specific person OR that application all togother
now it’s come down to being friends with marj or not- which seems to not matter in this case, but other cases it woudl make a difference,
you’d like to stay within your ‘network ‘ /friendship with that person just simply not be hasseled with their event badgering….
I did the same thing, googling “how can I block event invites on facebook”. Unfortunately, there’s no way. I’m getting an invite a day to DJ parties 15 hour drive from my house. I don’t get to the ones in town.
I couldn’t believe there’s not a block all event invites option, since so many of the other invites allow you to block a person.
Unfortunately the simplest solution is to probably unfriend the person. Wish there was a better solution.
I completely agree with everything you have said, especially about how marking an event as not attending only works for that particular event. With promoter type people like Mari, there’s an event to say no to every few weeks. That’s not right. They keep modifying Facebook and ignore this simple, yet direly needed, privacy request. These promoters should also do like you mention, and have an INVITE list, not an uninvite one. I’d think that’d make it easier for them, if they’re actually being nice, like Mari, and accepting your request.
Unfortunately, as I also posted on Mari’s site, there is also a way for people to send you event invites where you don’t know the person and AREN’T friends. I’ve been receiving facebook emails (and notification emails) from people that have an “add as a friend” link under their username. Perhaps these events come from my network, but if I’m not friends with these people, I don’t want to be invited to their crap. I wish I could deny all invite requests and all app requests. At the very least it should consider me not taking action, i.e. ignoring it, as ignoring it.
I don’t always have the time to go to facebook, say I’m not attending, and remove the event. It’s a broken system. What makes Facebook think that, since I didn’t have the time to even look at the first message, I want three more about the event. One of the messages was even along the lines of, “thanks for coming to the event.” And congratulating us on raising awareness and funds. I never even attended the event. I just ignored it.
I get this crap all the time, and I’m not friends with any of these promoter people. In fact, I knew Facebook’s friend search was crappy, and I’ve manually looked up these people. Now that I’ve noticed the “add as a friend” link, I know I was right all along. How does that happen? I don’t want to block people from my network who aren’t friends from seeing my profile, but that’s probably the only way to stops this BS.
I found a temporary solution…
Type a comment in the text box then click “No”. Although you are not attending, your comment will appear on the event’s page. And, if it was my event, seeing someone had typed “Please stop inviting me to events I obviously cannot attend” would most likely embarrass me. So I’d be more likely not to invite them in future to save embarrassment.
Perhaps this is a temporary work-around?
Hey Dan!
You really nailed it on the button!
I work in the entertainment industry across a variety of formats (clubs, concerts, corporate, theatre, film, etc) so as you can imagine, probably more than half of my Facebook friends are Promoters, DJs, Bands, MCs, Production Managers, Event Coordinators, and so on… and that can only mean one thing; never ending event invites. I receive approximately 8-15+ event invites a day, for which 90% have nothing to do with anything I could even start to care about, but the people sending out the invites are friends and colleagues I need to keep contact.
For me, Facebook isn’t a toy or a playful online social site. Rather it is business. It is the professional business hub for the modern social & entertainment industries, along with varying business, marketing, statistics, and of course, computers industries. If there is so much professionalism put behind the site, I just wonder why they have such a “Myspace” flow to your privacy from varying invites. Part of their enhanced privacy settings should allow us to individually block particular application invites from particular users AND/OR user groups / friends lists (ie: Promo-NoInvite friends group could be configured to block ALL Group & Event Invites from any friends within, just drop all your promoters, DJs & bands in there for a mass block).
My two cents worth, definitely loved your article, too!
I am in the same situation as Acerbius. To not have this ability is ridiculous. I just sent a “suggestion” to facebook, but since this issue has been a problem for a few years now, I don’t hold
out for much hope. It is very annoying. And I do not enjoy having to ask a colleague to please stop sending me invites to all the concerts they produce. That’s not fun… and I should not have to do that! Come on, Facebook. Grow up.
~Having a hell of a time unsubscribing to Facebook…how can it be done?
YES! They absolutely need a block invites option as I don’t want to delete friends sometimes, but want to stop receiving invitations!!! And I’ve actually deleted a “friend” before in order to stop receiving their invites and I STILL KEPT RECEIVING THEM! The only way I’ve found to stop them is to email the person and request to be removed from the invites list. However, I have one that is a celebrity and so I doubt that will work with him.