Have I been blocked from adding friends?

Hi everyone.
the past few days, I have been trying to add a lot of new friends. Mainly, I have been adding members of groups I like or of obscure artists that are hallmarks of my taste, thinking these are good listeners to be connected to.

I'm also an artist running a 'powerplay campaign,' but I suspect and hope that information is irrelevant to the following problem I'm having.

In the past 3 days, the first day I was able to send around 100 friend requests before they stopped going through (refreshing the user's page doesn't say "friendship requested"). The second day, I was able to add 100 also. But the third day (today), I added around ten people as friends and friend requests stopped working...

They still appear to work: You click add, you get the box asking you to confirm, then you get the box saying 'you have asked to friends" or whatever,

But the friend requests seem to not go through... When I refresh the user, it's as if I never sent the friend request...

I'm assuming this is part of a policy to stop spam, which is fine. But I can't find any details anywhere on the exact rules when it comes to adding people and what you can and can't do.

I don't want to violate any rules, but I would like to know what the rules are.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

-Andrew

Tecfan said:
Last year there were some problems with people/bots adding thousands of friends in a short period of time, so my guess is that you've hit a limit they have introduced after this. Which seems to be at 100.

and a personal thought: don't add people you don't know :) talk to them first, then add. Why? www.last.fm/home, you see those boxes there? You'll actually get relevant data you care about in the boxes there if you know your friends personally. Lots and lots of playground/third-party apps also use your friends for fun stuff like visualizing connections etc etc; I guess you see where I'm heading :>

Having only friends you personally know/have spoken to a lot, you'll get a richer last.fm experience
Thanks for your speculation. And I'll check out your music.

But I totally disagree. The people I know have horrible taste in music which is why Last.fm is a worthwhile product for me. I can totally tell if people are worth adding based on glancing at their library. And that's what I base whether or not I accept requests on too, so... whatever. I hardly want to talk to everyone in the world that might have similar music taste to me, but I may want to be able to see what they are listening to... Etc...

Anyway, it does seem I hit a limit of some sort, but it's the inconsistency in the numbers 100, 100, 10 are confusing to me.

What am I allowed to do? I just want to know what the rules are so I can follow them.

How until I should expect a response?

(if you don't work for last, please don't respond unless you have actual facts about their policies. It's like toying with my emotions when I see a response to the thread but it turns out to not be a real answer)

Thanks everyone. I'll just be here refreshing this page every 2 minutes.

Still no response... Can anyone help me with what the policy is on adding friends? I'd like to have as many friends as possible that have similar taste in music. But sometimes my ability to add friends just stops, and it seems to be totally random.
Help?

# Knapster01 said...
We do have limits set up to prevent mass friend request spammers. We can't let you know the limits, as that would allow circumvention for nefarious types. I would follow Tecfan's advice above.

Knapster01,
Thanks for responding, but just to be clear,
Are you a last.fm employee?
If so, is it last.fm's official position I shouldn't add friends if I haven't had conversations with them first?
That is what Tecfan was suggesting.

I'm really only interested in fairly obscure music. And I do so far see a benefit to adding friends that I don't know and haven't had conversations with, as long as they have a lot of the same more obscure artists in their library.

In case anyone cares, I'm more interested in experimental music and avant garde and 'outsider' music, so it's not like I'm spamming people that are into the flaming lips or something (a really big band whose existence in a user's library says nothing about their taste).

I'm only adding people, for the most part, that last.fm's taste-match-o-meter says are very compatible! (and even then, I'm not adding people when it says what we have in common is radiohead and n.w.a.)

And most people accept my friendship, so those people also don't think it's weird that I'm asking them to be friends.

I am an artist also, and I'm not going to lie and say that I don't think there is value in having lots of friends on last,
but
I have never used last to promote anything via last's free messaging or shoutbox
and
I have used last's powerplay system to buy listens, which is way more 'slimey' than adding friends whom you actually share interests with (on a music-based social network service), so I think it's kind of weird to be told that last.fm is 'just for me to share what I'm listening to with my real friends,' if that's what I'm being told by a last.fm employee.

So, is that last.fm's official position? Do you work for last.fm? And would the pr dept agree with tecfan also?

Thanks a lot for your response

-Andrew

natschos said:
Why would it be proof I am a spammer by the fact I send lots of friend requests? I am offended by this. It is not fair.

If you think I am a spammer, you should prove it! You should be able to prove it. If you're not able to prove it, you have no business accusing me of that, with all respect.Nobody said it is proof. It's just an indicator that there's a reasonable possibility. Accounts who send huge numbers of friend requests in a short period of time are usually spammers. If you're offended by this you're being massively oversensitive. It's an automated system, you are not being personally picked out and nobody is accusing you of anything.

Knapster01 said:
We do have limits set up to prevent mass friend request spammers. We can't let you know the limits, as that would allow circumvention for nefarious types. I would follow Tecfan's advice above.


Perfect opinion.

Right opinion.

Agree.