Sunday 28 November 2010

Social marketing aspect of truth

Social marketing is an organised application of marketing with its objective being: to create a sense of wellbeing for a specific civilisation/s. Social media has changed the way current society is interacting and behaving. Social marketing is present in social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace. Unless you have been living under a rock for the past couple of years, it is very prevalent that social networking sites have revolutionised the world. Facebook is the largest social networking site, having almost as many members as the population of Brazil. Notably, President Obama also used Facebook to facilitate his election and even large corporations such as Dell are using Facebook to hire new business minds. With that in mind, it is evident that Facebook has changed the way people behave; there is definitely a constant desire to be on Facebook checking what other people are up to, but is this normal behaviour? I personally feel Facebook encourages stalker-like behavior, yet I myself know I am a little addicted to Facebook since I constantly feel the need to check friends’ statuses and having a blackberry to enable me to do that every hour of the day, doesn’t really help. Maybe in the future there will classes to overcome Facebook addiction as well as programs for other addictions. More to the point, have the Facebook corporation already predicted that this would happen and are they currently trying to keep it under wraps from the public? Have they also kept lots of tragic stories such as how rapists have found their victims on Facebook or the case of Katie Piper out of the media?

Katie Piper was a former model and aspiring t.v. presenter who happened to start dating a man on Facebook, but on March 31st 2008 this same man raped her in a hotel room and later got a friend to throw industrial-strength sulphuric acid in her face. Katie later went on to say: “At one point he’d sent so many messages he blocked my Facebook account”. Are Facebook really doing enough to stop instances such as this?

Surely they could have background checks on people and have people with police records taken off the site.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1221077/Katie-Piper-Acid-attack-victim-bravely-shows-face-disfigured-boyfriend-Daniel-Lynch.html#ixzz16V0NfnMS

As you can see Facebook isn’t all about fun and games, there is a dark side to it too. Yet, I have also found a particularly annoying side to it additionally; Facebook is being used to market events, this means people are emailing me events that I really couldn’t care less about to my inbox. I class this as spam and find it especially annoying when I am having to sift through all of this to find relevant emails from friends and family. Yes, I really won’t be going to those raves half way around the world because: one, it’s not my scene, and two, I don’t live there so I would appreciate not being hassled. I have heard older generations talk about Facebook on this level, however I have never heard people of my own generation speak about it like this, so I would love to know what you think?

Perhaps I am just a scrooge..a little too old before my time.


4 comments:

  1. Although the story regarding Katie is a despondent one, it is unrealistic to assume that Facebook has the ability to respond to every case of stalking and bullying on their site. The site did announce earlier in the year that they plan to introduce a 'Panic Button' in order to tackle child grooming online, but as previously mentioned, there isn't enough employees available to reply to every issue. I think a more realistic approach would be allowing the Police some form of overshadowing on the site. I'm not suggesting this would prevent all of these problems, but it could be a start.

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  2. I totally agree that the site should have some form of overshadowing from the police.
    I also agree that.. it is unrealistic to think that Facebook could respond to every bullying case etc but it is their site...therefore I believe it is their responsibility and they should have more measures in place. I was unaware of the 'panic button' of which they might enforce.. I think this is a good start and should be put in place as soon as possible. :)

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  3. The panic button wouldnt work as your right there would never be enough employees available.
    Im not sure if anyone has seen the episode from the recent channel 4 series "coppers" which looks at the emergency services. It revealed that many of the 999 calls were made in relation to Facebook and people who have been recieving threats via the site.
    It seemed like the police were made to take such calls seriously but you got the impression from many of the officers that much of the trips they had to make out to facebook victims houses were a waste of time which should have been spent sorting out more serious crimes. However I suppose the same could be said for many other calls made to 999 but its just the reputation that Facebook has for causing problems has obviously influenced the officers.

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  4. I did watch that episode of coppers yes...I'm not sure if you remember but there was the incident where the police turned up to a teenage girls house..(the one who said there were girls threatening to kill her on Facebook) and the same girls were shouting abuse at her just outside her house..it appeared as if the girls were going to get very violent and the police put a stop to all of it. Was quite a serious case in my eyes.
    Perhaps as 'Facebook crimes' increase and there is more media attention..then the police and the Facebook corporation may take things a little more seriously.

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