As with most college students, Facebook has become a staple of socialization for me. Since it was created, the site has gained hundreds of millions of users. However, over the past few months it seems that Facebook has been trying to increase revenue with more advertisements on the main news feed page. Originally, they used to just appear on the side bar of the site, but now the format has completely changed. Advertising is the main way for online sites and companies to gain most of their income if they are not a business with a tangible product.
Normally, it never bothered me when I saw ads on the side for different stores, brands, and movies. Even if sometimes it felt a bit creepy that it was tailoring what advertisements were shown based on my likes and interactions with others.
Since the change, there are ads interwoven into my news feed in between the pictures and statuses of my Facebook friends. The ads themselves look like regular statuses with like and comment sections for people to use and share the advertisement. They do say that word of mouth is the best form of advertising; companies are just taking a more modern approach on the idea. I do not necessarily disagree with the idea of Facebook increasing the amount of ads they present on their news feed. To me it is just an unimportant annoyance I can live with or without. It is not like they are those annoying pop-up ads that you used to have to block on certain sites.
What is truly aggravating is the site constantly advertising for revenue through their different features. For example, whenever I write on a friend’s wall for their birthday, a little notification pops up asking if I would like to send them a Starbucks or Target e-gift card. As you can probably guess, I do not send these at all. Facebook knows enough of my information that it does not need to know my credit card number as well. Also, if I am going to give them a present, it is not going to be in a passive aggressive manner through some social media site.
Facebook is not the only guilty one in this. I have been on so many sites where ads are popping up eve r ywhe r e , or ads are playing at the bottom of pages. It is extremely d i s t r a c t ing and can turn away users from that specific sight. I know that in the past I have ceased visiting certain sites due to the fact that their material was not often updated and riddled with so many ads that they consumed the page.
Audio and video advertisements on sites like Spotify or Pandora can be so utterly inconvenient unless you are willing to shell out eight to ten dollars every month, which I can guarantee most college students will not pay.
Social media has become one of the fastest growing aspects of communication and with most of the sites being free, there has to be a way for them to create some sort of income for their employees. It is understandable that companies are taking advantage of the best way to reach the masses in order to continue having a regular clientele base.
At my internship this summer, I worked on social media marketing for a company. The company was posting statuses and pictures eight times a day in order to keep their audiences’ attention, in order to stand out from others due to the constant multitasking and media influence we intake every day. But it feels that sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and others are so focused on creating that revenue, that it seems like that only thing we take in anymore are commercials and advertisements.
