Being considered as 'an experienced user of social networks,' I was asked by fellow Multimedia student Steven Carroll to complete his questionnaire.
After spending some time to write my answers down, I thought I'd again share my answers as the may be of interest to someone. As always feel free to add your opinion by commenting on anything I've said.
1. Please tell me, which social networks you are a member of and your primary reasons for being a member?
Facebook
- To stay connected with friends and family
- Be informed of social events
- A way of logging many good photo memories
- Chatting with friends
Flickr
- Auto-posting function set up from my Posterous blog
- Sharing my photographs and designs with a more professional audience
Foursquare
- I have an interest in geo-location
- Competition with other Foursquare users in becoming Mayor
- Rewards and discounts for becoming a Mayor
- To some day be able to collect all my location date and create heat maps of my live on Foursquare (Could be considered as Foursquare art?)
Google Buzz
- A feed of all my professional social network activity (This means it doesn’t include Facebook)
- Came with my Gmail Account
Tumblr
- Auto-posting function set up from my Posterous blog
- Able to connect with a different audience, for example, I have friends that use Tumblr over any other blogging platform
Twitter
- Custom searches looking for keywords, for example; need web designer, know web designer and hire web designer
- Contacting potential clients
- Self-promotion
- Auto-posting new blog posts from my Posterous blog
- Tapping into a professional network
- A form of bookmarking websites (I tweet and re-tweet things that I may need to use in the future, or want to keep a track of in some way)
2. Have you ever clicked on an advertisement on a social network, if so why? I am interested in if any of these factors influenced you to click, colour, images used, font style, interactivity or just the product.
When it comes to adverts on social networks, I’m a stereotypical bloke that likes things to be visually pleasing, direct to the point and relevant. Since social networks can tap into your personal information adverts I click on are usually very relevant to myself. In my case, Facebook likes to bring up adverts on the subject of web designing, drumming and hot single girls. All of which catch my eye because of two things; relevance of the product and the images used. Being a user that likes the visual aspects of an advert over how it’s written is the first step for me. Interactivity does play a part in some cases, however I think these days the classic ‘Win an iPod by shooting ducks’ type of interactive adverts have been overdone, and in most cases proves to be a distraction from the products or offer. With other factors like colour and font, I’m a sucker for good, slick design. Anything that clashes from a design point of view doesn’t entice me to buy their product or click on their advert.
3. If you’ve never clicked on an advert on a social network why not? I am interested in targeted advertising; social networks that use your information, does your information used influence you not to click?
Although I have clicked on an advert on a social network I want to address the point about targeted advertising.
For me targeted advertising can go either way. It can target a relevant audience in a more efficient way to a traditional way of branding everyone with the same advert and hoping for the best. However in doing this targeted advertising, companies are limiting the possibility for spontaneity by restricting you to liking the things, and only these things you’ve stated. For example, I’m a keen drummer and have been for years. I’ve seen my share of relevant drumming type adverts and may have clicked on a few too, but what’s these for me to break out of liking drumming and learning the saxophone? I happen to have an interest in learning the saxophone at some point but would does advertising lose out on targeting me to buy saxophone lessons? Ultimately this is an advanced step to targeted advertising, knowing that I play the drums but also like jazz and funk music, would this hypothetical super social network be able to calculate that I may like saxophone adverts? Maybe it’s probably because I haven’t stated that I like these types of music but ultimately having social networks use your personal information to target you with relevant adverts is a good think. At the end of the day it’s helping you save time searching for something yourself but you still have the free will to click on that advert or not. I personally do.
4. Would you like to make any other comments about direct-targeted advertising on social networks? Your opinions matter as an experience user of social networks.
I suppose I’ve used the last question to creatively rant about that.
