The social network said the company violated its ToS

Nov 21, 2009 11:18 GMT  ·  By

With Facebook counting over 325 million users, it's little wonder that many are trying to profit from the social network and not always with the nicest of methods. One company that was selling fans and friends to customers wanting to boost their counts, USocial, was sent a Cease and Desist letter by Facebook for violating its Terms of Service with the methods it employs to get its customers more followers.

Facebook didn't make it clear whether it had an issue with USocial's business, selling followers, and only said that the company “violates its rights by sending spam, using web tools to harvest pages, getting login names and by accessing accounts that did not belong to the marketing firm.” The social network threatened legal actions unless USocial stopped the activities it had issues with. Facebook doesn't allow users to profit from their profiles, for example getting paid to friend someone, but it hasn't taken a stance on service getting Facebook users without offering them money.

USocial has decided to comply with the request and said it would stop offering to sell friends but would not shut down the service completely. The company stated it would delete the login information it had gathered up and also put a notice on its site, buried at the bottom, saying it isn't affiliated with Facebook in any way. For now, USocial has “temporarily” discontinued its “friends” service but it still sells fans for Facebook pages. It may also start selling friends again at some point, but the company says it will notify Facebook if it decides to do so.

These types of services are becoming more popular with the rise of social networks and aren't limited to Facebook. USocial sells these types of services for several sites, like Twitter and, recently, YouTube. $197 will buy you 1,000 Facebook fans, while 10,000 fans will set you back $1,167.