Needless to say, Facebook has become one of vital tools for PR practitioner. Personally speaking, I have a slight doubt whether this trend keeps or not.
[One importance of Facebook]
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and chief executive officer, talked about the prospects of Facebook in front of an audience during the world economic forum on January 30th 2009. He emphasised that the trend of sharing the information among people has been increased, and therefore, it signalised a further potential growth for the following five years.
As a Facebook user, I agree that by using Facebook you are able to share information or organise your community conveniently. But my concern is that Facebook can keep attention paid by its users, because it is especially popular among younger generations who tend to follow new fashions. Unfortunately, I could not find really convincing arguments from his comments above.
[Critics of Facebook]
One of the main critics of Facebook is the privacy issue. If it is new for you, the following video footage should be watched.
Even though Facebook is informing the user about the right and responsibility on Privacy Policy, it may cause problems as long as the user does not pay any attention to its privacy. Furthermore, the information is not only used on Facebook, but also other organisations can use it for marketing purposes. In other words, it threatens the idea of data protection on Facebook.
[So what is the future?]
It is obvious that Facebook will grow or retain its users, but they will still be specifically among younger generations. Moreover, not everyone is fond of Facebook. One should bear in mind that using Facebook as a tool for a PR plan, you have to consider whether Facebook is really an appropriate mean or not.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
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I agree that Facebook sometimes does invade the privacy matter, but last year,(concerning the second video) as I was doing my research on Social Networks, I actually found that the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) actually announced that it's illegal for them to search on SN's for people before an interview. So they are not allowed to do that anymore.
ReplyDeletePlus I've also read that statistics shown that facebook is usually a disaster with boyfriends/girlfriends and marriage issues.
I totally agree with you.
ReplyDeleteSocial network sites are fads. This is technology and as human beings, we always crave for new things.
I doubt whether Facebook will be as popular in 10 years as it is now. MySpace used to be really popular, but it is losing ground. Twitter seems to becoming more popular than Facebook. What is next? Jotting?
Nice point! I just realised that there are so many people from the class are highly interested in social media and think it is multi-functional to practise PR campaigns. However, have we ever wondered the other side of using social media? I couldn’t help but wonder if social networks are changing everyday, so is people’s appetite, how can organisations use social networks to do their PR campaigns for long-term period? People might get bored before we achieve the goal, thus we need to consider if PR practitioners, like us, overestimate the power of social networks and it may be out of date tomorrow. Will the next platform be ready for everyone to jump onto? I am not sure that…
ReplyDeleteI think that Facebook could be a good tool for appealing some target, but if we want to appeal older generations, I think that social networks are not the best option. So, I think that Facebook is an useful tool only for achieving objectives in young people.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I think that this kind of social networks invades our privacy.Yesterday, It was my birthday and when I opened Tuenti (it is like Facebook, but it is only used in Spain), the first screen was Coca-Cola gave me the congratulations: "Happy birthday María! Today you reach 25 years old!". I felt very upset because, how many companies have my personal information? I haven´t allowed any company takes my personal information.
Another example of the lack of privacy is when you allow that friends of your friends see your profile, because you can not control what kind of people are seeing your information and I think that it could be dangerous.
One real example about the lack of privacy in social networks and the consequences is this news: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jun/11/smith-family-photo-czech-advertisement