By Seowebmount
Remember MySpace? It’s difficult to believe how far we’ve come since then. Home pages used to just represent a fancier form of e-mail. Bulletins, which were essentially the old version of today’s status updates, had to be clicked for users to view them. You had ‘Top Friends’ so you could show off which of your Internet buddies you preferred (which people eventually realized could be considered quite rude). Social media held so much mystery. Comments and messages made people feel accomplished.
Since then, times have changed. Let’s check out what happened.
The Marketing Realization
So what happened to that mysterious and magical time? The answers lie primarily in marketing and advertising. Today, many people probably can’t even hear the words social media without thinking of marketing in some way. Not only do we see constant advertisements all over our home pages, sidebars, and headers, but now we see how others feel about brands and products.
Before social media, you only knew what your friends’ favorite TV shows were if they bothered to specifically tell you. The only way you could instantly contact them was if they dialed up the Internet and signed onto AOL Instant Messenger. Now, with the technology of high speed and satellite Internet it’s easier and faster than ever to check in on your friends. We see status updates, likes, and preferences from hundreds of people we know every time we sign in to our accounts.
Your Personal Information Isn’t So Personal
Marketing companies caught on to this phenomenon early. They saw the potential with MySpace, which explains why Fox (well, technically, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp) bought MySpace for $580 million dollars in 2005. Social media sites have access to everything you post — that means personal information and private conversations, among other pieces of information. The more you use the site, the more information you give away.
Websites like Facebook, MySpace, and Google send all the information users post to marketing companies. These marketing companies take your personal information, match it with all of your preferences, and create their own profile of you for research purposes. This provides the biggest influence for change in social media.
Once marketing companies hooked on to this, social media became designed around its audience’s wants and needs. You like basketball? Your favorite social media site probably asks if you want to officially ‘Like’ Lebron James or NBA 2K14, even if you’ve never clicked ‘Like’ on a basketball media page. You’re a single woman in her 30s? You probably get ads for dating sites that’ll help you meet somebody you can truly get along with. Before, you had to specifically type in or look for these subjects to learn more about them.
Real Life Actions Dictated By Social Media Perceptions
Today, it seems as if social media controls its users almost as much as users control social media. In the past, nobody worried much about what they said or did on MySpace. If anything, it was a place to reinvent oneself. Rebelling was as simple as having a profile and making somewhat unpopular statements. Now people worry about what they post in the event that it could cost them their job or even their marriage. According to several articles, Facebook has become one of the leading causes of divorce in the United States.
Some companies (though not many considering the power behind this) have their own employees acting as brand advocates via social media. I’ve seen people on my own limited friends list post almost exclusively about the company they work for. It’s hard to ignore when somebody uses their personal profile — which most people use as a way to express themselves individually — to vehemently promote a corporation. To the average viewer, it looks like this person has decided that their employers have more importance than just about anything in their life.
A New Marketing Landscape
We have now hit the age where marketing becomes about engaging consumers instead of advertising to them. Social media became flooded with games early on, and the popularity led companies to realize people would rather do something than listen to or watch something when on the site. Contests can be found everywhere, because now they’re so easily accessible and can have so many participants at once. This makes them more fun for the people involved, pushing the brand name further and generating more revenue which, in turn, makes even more contests available.
Soon we’ll see Google running the same kind of events as Red Bull, getting people together to take part and compete just to get its name out there.
resource: http://www.sitepronews.com/2014/01/03/social-media-evolved/
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