Is Facebook getting annoying?

Facebook is a company that is huge in the social media market today, but it is driving users away I think because it wants to be more than just an social network. I think that Facebook is going to crash like Myspace did, just faded away into the social network abyss. How is Facebook driving users away you may ask? In my opinion, Facebook has created a large number of users that want to share statuses, and look at other people statuses. As a result of this, Facebook has a captive audience, so Mark Zuckerburg, the creater/co-owner of Facebook, decided to place advertisements and game to create revenue for Facebook. At the beginning of Facebook(I joined Facebook in 2007), I didn’t really notice these ads and games, but a year or two ago I started to notice them. It didn’t annoy me so much then because I didn’t use Facebook as much as I do now. Plus, the advertisements and games weren’t as noticeable as it is now, in the advertisements are everywhere. The right side of your Facebook page, is littered with advertisements, saying so-and-so liked this page so you like it, who cares! Along with targeted advertisements to your liking, where they are taking companies that you liked or showed interest in on Facebook and putting it into an algorithm then they post advertisements based upon that algorithm. Games bug me to now because my friends will notify me of a game they played and then it goes to my phone and my I Pad. I don’t ever play Facebook games because I like to play console and handheld games. So why do my friends keep sending me messages to play so-and-so? I don’t know! The game notifications go into my notification feed. I know you can turn that off, but it is very hidden in the settings and I don’t have time to mess with the settings being a full fledged college student. I hear the advertisements are going to just increase over time, so that won’t help out any. So as you can see why I think Facebook will fade out just like Myspace did. Why cannot Facebook be just a social network? This next segment is how to change Facebook to not lose as many users as it will if this continues. Promote a company in a different way, such as if you like the company, you will get a code for a percent off your next purchase. For the games, make it easier to turn off the notifications like in the notification bar, you have an on/off button of what you want to be notified about, instead of having to go into settings and select whatever you want to get rid of. Another idea is to have advertisements on the notification bar and no place else. That way Facebook can still make money and you don't have to see the advertisements in and around your news feed. Do you feel like these ideas will get you not to leave Facebook? Do you have any other ideas that would work?  

Four essential messages that advertisers do to get your attention

Today I am going to discuss what are four essential message objectives advertisers’ do to get your attention. The four essential messages that I am going to tell you about are promoting brand name recall, linking a key attribute to the brand name, persuade the costumer and  scare the costumer into action. Then I will tell you what I think is the most important essential message is out of the four messages that I have selected. Now I am going to show you a variety of videos to show you examples of what companies are trying to get you to buy their product. 

Promoting brand name recall is what the advertisers call repetition of the name or they create slogans and jingles to get you to remember the product they are trying to advertise. For example. in this State Farm commercial,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3IV22FJIbc, they have a jingle “like a good neighbor, State Farm is there” and that goes along with the song that is at the very end of the advertisement(0:26 through 0:32).

 Linking a key attribute to the brand name is like the Subway commercial where they became associated with the $5 footlong. Now Subway is known for that $5 footlong song.  News companies do that all of the time when they broadcast special reports like this NBC Special Report(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPcepBSrC9g) where you know something important and we know when we hear that, that something is about to happen on the news front.

 Next on the four essential messages objectives advertisers’ do to get your attention is persuading the customer. This involves creating and/or strengthening beliefs around the selling point of the product. The beliefs can be a reason why you should by the product, comparison between their products and others, testimonials of people who use their product, informercials about their product. For example, Progressive Car Insurance in their commercials uses persuading the customer by showing the other competitors rates  verses theirs. Another example would be this ad(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDO9hP-xKL8) for a Nikon camera, in which Aston Kutcher uses their camera as a celebrity endorsement. 

The final message that I am going to cover is the tactic which is scare the customer into action.  The Allstate Mayhem(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw9hQNdXYbI) commercials are a good example of scare the customers into action. There are many commercials on the YouTube clip.  All of them involved a man that does something stupid and then says “if you have cut rate insurance. your not covered so get Good Hands Roadside Assistance”. They  want you to buy their insurance because it’s supposedly better than your cut rate insurance.

I think the most important essential messages that I covered in this blog post is the first one that I covered which is promoting brand name recall. I think that because most people remember more often a jingle or slogan that they hear during an advertisement. So therefore, I think it is a more effective strategy because more people will remember your product better.