Media Influence - Social Networking Websites - Joe Drury

For this task I am going to see how the media influences me and I have decided to do this by looking at internet advertisements and seeing how they influence me to do something that I wouldn’t have thought of before.

I am going to look at social networking sites like:
http://www.facebook.com/ http://www.myspace.com/ http://www.twitter.com/ http://www.bebo.com/

Before I find out for myself how media influences me I am going to see how other people feel about these advertisements on social networking sites.

I found a question/answer kind of site http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2008/10/social-network-advertising-annoying-effective.html%20And.There is a post on here where Facebook asked its users “Do you mind seeing ads on Facebook?” and 74% said yes and 24% said no. Which is interesting since it’s an official poll that Facebook created and you would expect them to tell their users that they don’t mind advertising but clearly they do.

This is one of the advertisements that I found for Relentless Energy Shots and on the actual page it is right in the corner and it is quite a nice advertisement that doesn’t jump out at you but gives you the chance to click on it and see more, like a video. I’ve noticed that Facebook doesn’t directly show advertisements but they have enabled a function that lets you add friends or ‘become a fan’ of something you haven’t come across before so for example. Whispa chocolate bar could be an icon and you could see it and if you wanted to click, become a fan. Now I don’t know if Cadburys look at this but this definitely is advertising for me because people still see it and acknowledge it.

On Myspace even on the log in page it is full of advertisements but when I actually log in the advertisements are very direct and you can either click on them or you don’t. I never click on these advertisements because I just don’t feel the need to, there’s no reason why I should click it.

This advertisement is very blatant; it even says advertisement below it. For me it doesn’t look attractive at all because I know that it is only there to sell me stuff that I probably don’t want The picture even moves around in the advertisement ‘cell’. Trying to make me click it, this makes me very aware and I am not influenced to access it.

I am mostly interested in the advertisements on Facebook because they’re only advertising if you let them because usually below the advertisement a friend of yours might be a fan and it will mention this, and then it will allow you to ‘become a fan’. And by clicking this you get messages kind of like bulletins telling all that advertisements fans updates and offers etc.

So I think this has a big influence on me because sometimes I see TV shows or sweets that I like or something advertised and I click ‘become a fan’ without really paying any attention, and after this I will sometimes get a post off their wall which shows on mine telling me about whatever I have ‘become a fan’ of.

I really like this because you become a friend kind of and they just put information out there without you actually having to go through loads of rubbish advertisements.

In conclusion I think that Facebook is the biggest influence on me because you don't immediately recognize these advertisements as actually being advertisements, they are where you would see suggested friends so you don't see them all the time and when you ‘like’ them it doesn't take you to a different page. It's the same with ‘become a fan’ button, on your wall you will get whatever you clicked on saying stuff like if there is a competition running or just to say hi, which makes me feel closer to the chosen advertisement. So I can say there is definitely a media influence on social networking sites, especially Facebook.