Social Networks' Advertising Dilemma

Waters, R. (2007). Social networks advertising dilemma. FT.Com, , 1. http://proxy.consortiumlibrary.org/docview/229060417?accountid=14473


The article examines how social networks like YouTube, MySpace or Facebook tried to include advertising as a moneymaking source in their mission.It describes how social networks developed from showing users random commercials to user-targeted advertising. It started with YouTube charging a certain amount of money for each thousand viewers on its “channels”.  Then MySpace and Facebook tried to use this method of advertising through using personal information of its users. According to the author this system is most likely going to be the next big moneymaker on the Internet. While people leave a social map on networks, which enable advertisers to be very specific, the problem of monetizing this possibility comes up. What's left is a great potential to use personal information in order to adapt advertisements to everyone's interests. Waters bases his information on his own knowledge and on a statement of an expert in new media Publicis Groupe.
Considering that this article was written in 2007, it's interesting to see how advertising has developed in social media since then. YouTube still uses its channels to play commercials and Facebook has sophisticated its method to show advertisements based on the users' interests. The author was right when he said that this business would be a great source for making money.

Violent Video Games

While we were talking about video games in class today, I couldn't determine if they are good or bad. It really depends on what kind of video games kids play. In Germany we had a huge public discussion about violent games and how they influence kids' personalities. After some shootings in german schools, the police tried to find similarities between those kids, that acted violently. They found plenty of violent video games in their homes, so people started blaming video games for those outbreaks of violence. Most of the kids or teenagers that shot people didn't have friends in real life, but they created their identity within video games. That's maybe the only place where they can find admiration by others. So can video games encourage aggressiveness? I think this is a really interesting discussion that will certainly continue in the future.

Cyber Bullying

This video shows exactly what cyber bullying is about. But what is the difference between cyber bullying today and bullying in the past? Ryan´s mother tries to explain it like that:“(…) Back in my days if you´re getting bullied, it ends at the schoolyard (…)”. But nowadays kids go online after school and make themselves more vulnerable by being present in the Internet. Contacting people and disseminating information about them got a lot easier trough social networks and websites. But we should also consider, that the Internet was not the only factor that lead to Ryan´s death. It certainly made it easier for others to bully him, and it gave Ryan the possibility to do research about how to commit suicide without showing his identity.