Skip to main content

Friends For Sale

It sounds remarkably like the application on Facebook where users get to 'sell' and 'buy' their friends like some form of digital black market trade. However, the friends for sale implied here is the one offered by the marketing firm, Usocial.

Friends and Followers should not be bought, is the message from Facebook. Connect only to those who want to connect to you and we will stop those companies who sell online friends. USocial is a web-marketing firm, operating form Australia, providing Facebook, Twitter and FrontPage marketing services. Their Facebook marketing service states "For an investment of only $197, we'll bring you 1,000 brand new targeted Facebook friends to your existing account, or we'll set up a new account for yourself or your business at no charge in order to deliver the targeted friends." USocial has package of buying 1000 to 100000 Twitter followers at varying price range. If such kinds of activities are allowed to run under the banner of web advertising then the thin line between web promotion and spamming, disappears.
(Friend shopping not allowed: Facebook
Mon Nov 23 15:17:16 IST 2009, by Abhishek Mehta)


This case marks the line where social network advertising begins to slip into the internet black market. Advertisers flock to successful social network platforms like Facebook and Twitter to sell the users to marketers like freshly gutted pigs. Due to the sheer amount of users, and the availability of data harvesting tools on facebook, it is a gold mine of information for advertisers and marketers alike.

There are tons of applications on Facebook that actually helps with promotions and advertising of all sorts. It's a wonder how anybody can keep up with all of this.
Though it may look like a rather bleak future in terms of keeping our lives from being commercialized, I still hold to my Honours year's research that the work of advertisers will eventually be one of managing communities, niche communities, and trust will be the currency.

Social marketing is a dangerous game. Where is the line between customer care (because you have to care) and to con your customers. Both involve a form of superficial relationship to extract benefits. Chaos theory.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for the OMG!s

Popular posts from this blog

Selling "Toxic Masculinity" in Branding

With the way people are responding to the latest Gillette ad, anyone would think “toxic masculinity” was a new term coined to shame men.   Gillette isn’t the first men’s brand to redefine its image, a process that actually started months before  the world went crazy this week over the shaving company’s new ad . from news.com.au  - ( https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/beauty/for-men/why-mens-brands-tackling-toxic-masculinity-is-nothing-new/news-story/5ffadfa7859513b18883a2b09cc46f20 ) Coming from the perspective of Advertising & Branding, one of the basics in profiling your target market in a creative brief, is to define their demographic points to make assumptions. One critical factor is Gender. We see it in the marketplace display all the time, black & sporty designs for men, pink and floral miniatures for women. taken from packagingstrategies.com The industrial revolution created mass production of the same items, first, packaging was designed with a focus to hig
Post a Comment
Read more

How to write a Media Plan

Taken from Wikipedia Components of a media plan Define the marketing problem. Where is the business coming from and where is the potential for increased business? Does the ad need to reach everybody or only a select group of consumers? How often is the product used? How much product loyalty exists? Translate the marketing requirements into media objectives. Must the ad reach people in a wide area? Then mass media, like newspaper and radio, might work. If the target market is a select group in a defined geographic area, then direct mail could be best. Define a media solution by formulating media strategies. For example, the rule of thumb is that a print ad must run three times before it gets noticed. Radio advertising is most effective when run at certain times of the day or around certain programs, depending on what market is being reached. Advertising media includes Television ( TVC, television commercial) Radio Newspapers Magazines (consumer and trade) Outdoor bil
Post a Comment
Read more

Science of Sleep - Lessons of Royce

THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP (From Royce's Footnotes) I have had the fruitful opportunity to receive a lecture on the technicalities of sleep, sponsored by my company, Tropicana Corporation Berhad. The speaker is also known as a sleep doctor, or sleep specialist, which can also be your GP or Ear, Nose & Throat specialist. There is also the American Board of Sleep Medicine - http://absm.org/  to understand a collective of Sleep scholars. R.E.M - Rapid Eye Movement There are 5 stages of REM sleep and we begin our sleep by entering heavier, uninterrupted sleep at the start and progress into longer alternating intervals of light REM sleep and Deep (Non-REM sleep). TOOLS OF THE TRADE (PSG) http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/guide/polysomnogram EEG   (electroencephalogram) to measure and record  brain  wave activity EMG  (electromyogram) to record muscle activity such as face  twitches ,  teeth  grinding, and leg movements; it also helps in determining the pre
Post a Comment
Read more