How to mass email someone's friends on MySpace?

November 14, 2008 6:23 PM

MySpace question (which, forgive me, is probably easy to answer but I'm in a bit of a crisis): is there a way to send a message to ALL of one user's friends OR can you suggest a way to quickly contact many users about a funeral/memorial service?

Sorry if this is a dumb question but i don't have the time or resources to research right now.

My friend's boyfriend killed himself this week, his memorial is TOMORROW, and I'm trying to pitch in to reach whoever I can to tell them. It's been hard b/c my friend doesn't know all this guy's pals, doesn't have his cell phone to call them, and is kind of desperate to get people to the service on short notice.

Is there any way to mass email people on MySpace, from the dead guy's list of friends for example?

Or, do you have any other good ideas?

Thanks so much.

posted by tristeza to Technology (11 answers total)

Response by poster: Oh shit - FACEBOOK too! The GF is there so I could email all her friends.
posted by tristeza at 6:24 PM on November 14, 2008

Response by poster: Shit AGAIN - if this in any way violates the MySpace TOS, just tell me that, it's fine, I just really don't know.
posted by tristeza at 6:26 PM on November 14, 2008

Post a bulletin. All of your friends will see it.
posted by infinityjinx at 6:34 PM on November 14, 2008

Response by poster: Can i post a bulletin so all THEIR friends see it?? We dont' know really any of the same peeps/
posted by tristeza at 6:35 PM on November 14, 2008

Does the girlfriend know any of his friends? If so, have one of them post a bulletin, and then ask other friends to repost maybe?
posted by Airhen at 6:36 PM on November 14, 2008

Leave a comment on his page. People will probably be checking it if they know he died, and they will read the recent comments.
posted by infinityjinx at 6:45 PM on November 14, 2008

Response by poster: Thx, infinityjinx, I did do that thinking it was the safest bet. Thx airhen, I'll try.
posted by tristeza at 6:48 PM on November 14, 2008

On Facebook you're going to want to set up an Event. There's a step where you define a guest list and you can make the event visible to all of Facebook (though it won't show up on their wall or anything, like other comments and group joins, etc. do).
posted by rhizome at 7:07 PM on November 14, 2008

Best answer: On Facebook, if you search his name, do you get a "view friends" option? If so, you could click "add as friend" on each of them. That gives you a chance to send a personal message with the friend request. You could write a personal message that said that you weren't really friending them but were just trying to alert them about the memorial service and then paste it into each personal message field.

I don't know if this violates Facebook's TOS, but it seems like they'd have to be pretty jerky to do anything to you because of it.
posted by craichead at 7:36 PM on November 14, 2008

I think Facebook does have some limit on how many friend requests one can send in a day, so you might want to tell the first few people to pass the information along.
posted by desjardins at 8:46 PM on November 14, 2008

Leaving comments on MySpace and Facebook is a good start. If you are more determined to get out the word, form the equivalent of a phone tree. Maybe make a list of all their freinds, then contact 10 of them (starting with the ones you know). Tell them what happened, and ask them if they'd help you get out the word. Give them each a list of a different 10 people to contact from the list you compiled. Give them the message to send out, and include something about people contacting you if they want to help get out the word too.
posted by Good Brain at 1:46 PM on November 16, 2008