Facebook appears to be testing out a new form of spam detection in which users who have no friends in common cannot friend each other. The main purpose of this system is to prevent the massive amount of fake accounts that sprouted up in recent weeks. In contrast to MySpace, who had this spam tactic destroy their system, Facebook appears to be implementing a robust system to automatically detect what relationships are not likely to occur.



In other words, Facebook knows how likely it is that you like someone even if you haven’t friended them yet. For those users who are using spammy tactics by adding random users as friends now receive the following message:

Do you know this user personally? To prevent misuse of Facebook, this request can’t be sent. To learn more, please visit the Help Center. If you believe you’re seeing this message in error, you can report the problem.

You can see the error below. Ironically, the person who reported this issue to us probably didn’t actually know the person, by their own admission. The bottom line is this: Facebook is aggressively pursuing those spammers who are using the new “friend adding” techniques. If you are using similar strategies you should stop now because you could end up caught in the crossfire. Then you’ll have to drive cross country, only to have Facebook reject your request to have your account reinstated, as this woman did.

Update

Some users already reached out to us saying they didn’t like the idea behind this. Keep in mind, this does not mean that all users who are not connected cannot friend each other. It’s simply a system to prevent those individuals who are adding large numbers of friends that they aren’t connected to from doing so.

“Hey BillyBob, you wanna watch a cat playing the piano on YouTube while we video chat?” Conversations like this can now be materialized, thanks to a company called Rounds.



The company offers a live video chat meeting point and they have expanded their web video platform to give video chatters extra layers of fun and functionality like the opportunity to view Youtube videos. Rounds´ mission is to bridge the gap between the offline and online world by genuinely replicating real life communication. On Rounds.com and the Video Chat Facebook App, which launched August 17th, you can multi-task social activities like playing games, snapping funny screenshots, listening to music, Facebooking, Youtubing, shopping and more.

Rounds (formerly called 6Rounds) was in closed beta up until recently and, although no advertising was performed, the site has gained 300,000 international members just by word of mouth. Within one week from its launch, the Facebook app already attracted 20,000 members and the numbers should soon surpass that of their website.

My first test of the Rounds.com video chat felt like a Chatroulette scenario (heavy with random weirdos), though I realized soon that the Rounds Facebook App offers many alternatives to avoid this discomfort. In fact, Rounds.com is not intended to be a destination site but rather a learning mechanism to enhance the Facebook application that is currently a friends-only zone and ensures users privacy and trust in the app.

I learned of the multitude of cool features when I met with Rounds CEO Dany Fishel, COO Ilan Leibovich and Marketing Manager Natasha Shine in their Tel Aviv office and received a warm welcome with a fascinating presentation. I asked them questions about Rounds´ features, uniqueness, success and plans for the future:

AllFacebook: How is Rounds different than other social video services such as Chatroulette, Skype or OoVoo?

Rounds: The Rounds Facebook app offers tons of features unavailable on competitor apps - the rich social activities and real-time collaborative games, the funny webcam effects and snapshots possible during conversations. We´ve created an entertaining video chat arena that members spend hours and hours on.



Furthermore, our API is very unique. For example, a developer can create an educational activity and embed the Rounds experience on his website which acts as a tool targeted for his members and clients

AF: What is being done about the abrasive sexual content that is often found on similar services such as Chatroulette?

R: Our focus is on user experience and our highest priority is to make sure that nothing bothersome occurs. Part of the reason we decided to launch the Rounds Facebook app as a friend´s only zone was to protect users´ privacy and begin by creating a loyal, trustworthy user base.

We are constantly monitoring the use of thepplication and blocking people´s inappropriate uses. Once we begin to open the application up with more public features such as random rounds, we will be implementing more security regulations. Chatroulette is a big warning sign for us and we are tip toeing gently to avoid anything remotely similar to it.

AF: What social features does Rounds offer?

R: Currently in the Facebook App you can enjoy high-quality video chats without downloading, take snapshots and share them on Facebook, jointly browse Facebook´s profiles, watch YouTube videos, play multi-user games, collaborate on virtual whiteboards, share pictures on Facebook and Flickr and co-browse on Google Maps.

We also have the following games: Infected Qwertys , Qwerty Invaders, Truth or Dare, Backgammon, Chess and Checkers. Coming soon are Battleship, Tetris Wars, Cowboy Hero and many more! With our developers´ API, the platform is constantly being added to with games and activities, enriching the video experience.

AF: Can you describe the Rounds business model?

R: Rounds uses a coin system allowing members to purchase extra features and functionalities. Members earn free coins by inviting their friends, publishing snapshots and overall engagement. They spend coins to add features like extra webcam effects, virtual animated gifts, games and activities, chat session recording and various enhancements. Another business model we are considering is product placements within the video chat experience though it´s important to note that we don´t want our members feel bombarded by advertisement so it will be done in a non-intrusive manner.

AF: What is your feedback from users?

R: Over the past year we received feedback from members who wanted to see more games and activities on our platform. Statistically speaking, when we started out and didn´t have any games or activities, the video chat sessions were only 3-4 minutes long. As we added more games and activities, we saw the average time per session increase to 19 minutes and it continues to grow!

AF: How can people find new friends with common interests, like social matching?

R: Currently, the Rounds Facebook application is for friends only, however, members can find interesting people through a published snapshot stream. At a later stage, we will use our social matching mechanism (a tool that takes the members info from their profiles to match them up in random rounds with people that have common interests).

Members can also share their personal Rounds link (Each member gets a permanent link) through various social communities and invite people to call them on Rounds. On Rounds.com, members can search through members by different interests. They can also filter their search according to country, state and city.

Would you drive all the way from Maryland to California to try to get your Facebook account reinstated? That’s what Karen Beth Young did but apparently this wasn’t enough to impress the Facebook receptionist on duty. “Oh, people have driven farther than you, from Canada,” she was reportedly told, according to this Forbes story.



It’s nothing new for people to get banned on Facebook for various reasons, including if the site deems that you are harassing or spamming other members. But Young is taking it one step further - after her direct appeal to Facebook failed, she has now turned to the court system.

Young has filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court of California - you can see details of her August complaint here. She is alleging breach of contract, violation of her constitutional rights, and violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act - Young has bipolar disorder.

Facebook’s lawyers at Orrick have filed a motion to dismiss the case. A spokesperson told Forbes the lawsuit was “without merit” and the company would “fight it vigorously”. The spokesperson would not comment on why Young’s account was disabled, citing Facebook’s privacy policies.

It seems likely that Young was banned for the unconventional way she used Facebook. The Shepherd University sudent joined Facebook in February 2010 and a few months later, by the time her account was disabled, she had over 4,000 friends. She used the site to help promote her cancer awareness efforts and freely admits that she friended people she did not know in real life but who she thought would be interested in the cancer awareness cause. When her account was disabled, she reached out to Facebook and got this response from "The Facebook Team":

Your account was disabled because your behavior on the site was identified as harassing or threatening to other people on Facebook. Prohibited behavior includes, but is not limited to:

o Sending friend requests to people you don´t know

o Regularly contacting strangers through unsolicited Inbox messages

o Soliciting others for dating or business purposes

After reviewing your situation, we have determined that your behavior violated Facebook´s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. You will no longer be able to use Facebook. This decision is final and cannot be appealed.

Young has indicated she doesn’t want to start a new account, since this would be against Facebook’s rules anyway and she wants her old contacts and groups back.

It sounds like it could be an interesting case if it goes to trial. Young does not have a lawyer but tech law professor Eric Goldman told Forbes there had been "a groundswell of ADA litigation against websites and a court could have sympathy for the plaintiff”.

But have we really reached a point where access to Facebook is considered a human right? Isn’t the site entitled to ban people for their behavior, regardless of whether they have a disability? I thought equal treatment was the goal.

On the other hand, Facebook’s policies are opaque and somewhat byzantine - for example, did you know that you can’t export your data?. At the very least, there should be a clear and fair appeals process if someone gets banned. At 500 million members, Facebook is no longer just another website, it’s increasingly essential to a 21st century social life. Perhaps there is a human rights argument after all?

As part of a series of announcements today at a press event in San Francisco, Apple made clear that it is planning to build its own social networking features. But how big are its social aspirations? The new version of Apple’s iOS software, 4.1, is due out next week, and it will include the Game Center, a social network service designed specifically for mobile games. That’s been in the works for awhile, and is relatively simple — more surprising is Ping, Apple’s new music social network, designed for iTunes.

Both are analogous to other hardware-based services that have been on the market for years, not social networking sites. But it’s easy to wonder where Facebook is in all of this given Apple’s new social focus — that is, besides the subtle Facebook integration into the new music service. Up through last January, Facebook was getting a lot of attention from Apple, appearing as example services during stage presentations, and consistently reaching the top of the iTunes App Store charts. The trend had been building for a while, as we noted last December.

Is Apple looking to build its own social platform now? Aside from a simple integration in Ping, Facebook is absent in these latest launches, as are all other third party social networking services, like Twitter or MySpace. Here’s a closer look at what Apple is launching, what the moves indicate about its plans for the future, and how Faceboook could be an ally or a competitor.

Game Center: Sort of Social

First up is Apple’s Game Center, a new iOS app and API that lets you play games with friends and strangers, and lets developers add integrated social features to their games. Somewhat similar to Xbox Live, or third-party social platforms like Scoreloop, Aurora Feint and Ngmoco’s Plus, it includes basic features like leaderboards and achievements. While Apple didn’t go into much more detail today on how exactly the social features will work, previous reports indicate that the app will let users sign in with their Apple IDs (what you use for iTunes, etc.), create and identify each other by nickname, send person-to-person notifications and a way to “Find Me by Email” — meaning email invites and requests about games, potentially. It also includes a matching service to let find non-friends to play, and to create multiplayer games.

We’re waiting to see just how social the Game Center gets. If Apple can effectively tie in its identity system and invites, it could spur more people to share games with friends, and gain traction. If it’s too hard to use, or doesn’t make identity meaningful and easy, it could just stay a relatively peripheral, contained system like Xbox Live’s social features — and not become a significant new social platform feature for third parties. So far, Apple seems more focused on traditional-style games, as it showed off Epic Games’ new title Project Sword on stage, but nothing else. Previously, though, it has shown off iOS social titles like Zynga’s FarmVille for the iPad.

Apple ID is not currently a comparable service to Facebook, in that there’s no central site interface, network of real-life friends, or set of communication channels along the lines of what Facebook has. For games, Apple seems to be taking a conservative approach to making iOS games more social, not more heavily integrating phone contacts or even Facebook integration, as many iOS games have themselves done while it sees how the concept performs with users.

Ping: More Social, But Still Limited

Even more interesting is previously-rumored Apple’s music social network, Ping. The company framed it as a more music-focused alternative to Facebook and Twitter, in those words. The more direct assault is on MySpace, though, including MySpace Music, and its iLike applications on Facebook. Available for iTunes 10 today, it has all the features of a music social network, reminiscent of third-party social plugins for iTunes that have been out for years, and offered by iLike and others.

Ping is simple, and borrows heavily from popular interface designs. It lets you share and consume a variety of music-related information using the follower-followed model as seen on Twitter and other services. You can follow artists, and see a page of what they’re listening to and sharing, and where they’re playing live venues. Individuals have their own pages, showing what they’re listening to, as well as their reviews of songs, and other activity. And a Recent Activity page shows you the latest from everyone you follow, all in one place — overall, the interface will remind users of Facebook and Twitter.

On the social front, you can Like or Comment on any item, and you can also search for friends on the site, or invite them via email or Facebook. We haven’t gotten a look at the Facebook integration yet, but according to its splash page on the launch, Apple appears to be asking users to share their friends lists with it, then using that information to determine which ones are also using Ping.

Other features include custom charts of albums and songs you might like, and ways to buy. You can listen to 30 second samples of songs, and click to buy them through iTunes, with Apple getting its cut per its relationships with record labels. Third party music discovery services also tend to link digital and CD sales to Amazon and other sites — Apple is effectively closing that loop with Ping, ensuring that it always gets a cut when people find music they want to buy. If you want to buy tickets, and you might, as there will be 17,000 concert lists in the app, Apple will funnel you through Live Nation to complete the process.

Today, CEO Steve Jobs also said that you’ll be able to configure your settings so that you can approve who follows you, promising that “you can get as private or public as you want,” and, in what might have been an allusion to Facebook’s historically complex controls, he added that “the privacy is super simple to set up, anyone can do it.”

Ping, as an app for iTunes, will only available on iTunes desktop clients, and on iPhone and iPod devices. In contrast to most other methods of music discovery, it does not span platforms or include a central web interface. But iTunes still has 160 million users, as Jobs was careful to point out today, so that’s a very large closed market, that is continuing to grow with the proliferation of Apple hardware products around the world.

What Are Apple’s Social Plans?

Ping and the Game Center, announced on the same day, might lead one to the conclusion that Apple is trying to create its own social networking features. And that’s not all — the company has been busy filing a variety of social networking-related patents since the start of this year. One was iGroups, a location-focused real-time messaging service. Another is for a set of mobile contact and social networking syncing features, that happen to prominently feature Facebook.

Many pieces of evidence point to Apple’s own social ambitions. If it one day decides it wants to build a centralized social platform for the web, like what Facebook is in the process of doing and like what Google wants to do, then it has pieces to do so. You can imagine being able to build out your Apple ID, carefully managing your account for various purposes, from gaming to music to enterprise collaboration, and even photos — photo-sharing is a key component of Facebook, and Apple has millions of people already using iPhoto, especially due to its phones.

The concept of tying together different social networking niches is what Google appears to be trying to do now.

However, Apple might just be trying to build its all these services to provide specific value to existing products. No one has built a large, high-quality social graph to rival Facebook’s, to date, although Twitter and Google are trying in their own ways. As Google is showing, figuring out how to create a service that is more than the sum of its parts is about nailing user psychology, not cobbling products.

There are also signs that Apple might be planning to do more with Facebook. For one, Facebook has the single largest app in the App Store. A recent interview with Facebook Effect author David Kirkpatrick has more on that:

It’s so heavily used compared to other apps that I have been told by someone who thought he knew the data — this is highly secret data and I don’t know the actual numbers — that more than half of all usage of the iPhone of apps, other than those provided by the phone itself like telephony and email, is coming from Facebook. And on the iPad, too, it’s just a huge, huge part of usage.

Apple might be envious, but it almost certainly wants to take advantage of what Facebook has already built. The Ping integration today is one small example of that. Another is code pointing to a feature that would allow device owners to more easily upload video to Facebook. And then there’s some more information from Kirkpatrick. “So in a way, Apple and Facebook are joined at the hip, and I think that’s one reason why Zuckerberg and Jobs have been spending time together.”

Zuckerberg and Jobs wouldn’t be spending time together if Zuckerberg thought Jobs was busy plotting a rival service. But they would be spending time together if they were exploring how to partner, with Facebook providing an underlying set of social features and Apple providing hardware and hardware-driven software products.

Given how early and niche-specific Apple’s social networking efforts are, and how prevalent Facebook is in the world and on iOS devices, we still could see a partnership emerging, rather than a rivalry.

[Screenshots via Gdgt, Engadget, TechCrunch and Patently Apple.]