Man has Google+ ad yanked off Facebook, ad campaigns suspended
A man who posted an advert on Facebook publicising his own Google+ page has had the ad taken down and all his other campaigns suspended.
Sigh. We'd hoped to keep this one clean, but it looks like the battle between Facebook and Google+ is going to get messy. A chap by the name of Michael Lee Johnson has had an advert for his own Google+ page yanked from Facebook, and all of his ad campaigns suspended.
The ad itself was pretty innocuous -- you can see it over there on the right. It reads: 'If you're lucky enough to have a Google+ account, add Michael Lee Johnson, Internet geek, app developer, technological virtuoso.'
Apart from a slight air of jovial smugness, there's not much wrong with that. But apparently Facebook wasn't happy, and, according to a post on Johnson's Google+ account, it yanked the ad, and suspended all of his campaigns. Johnson was sent the following message: 'Your account has been disabled. All of your adverts have been stopped and should not be run again on the site under any circumstances.'
The message continued: '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.'
Our dedicated US cousins had a rifle through Facebook's terms of use and advertising guidelines hunting for clues, and found this: 'We may refuse ads at any time for any reason, including our determination that they promote competing products or services or negatively affect our business or relationship with our users.'
In other Google+ news, hacktivist group Anonymous has been banned from Google's new social network, apparently for posting inappropriate content, and has since decided to start its own social network, AnonPlus.
The site is still under construction, although it says on the home page that 'soon the actual site will go up and you can begin to interact with it'. We'll be interested to see if the site enforces anonymity, and, if so, how a social network functions under such conditions.
Are you mad keen on Google+? Or does Facebook hold your heart? Let us know in the comments, or on our Facebook page.