What the Facebook is Going on Here?

How Are We Supposed to Advertise to the Social-Media Addicted?
From Advertising Age Online


This article is an editorial about social networking (Facebook, specifically),the way in which it's revolutionized our society, and how that change is affecting advertising and marketing. As Facebook becomes more and more of a "freak show," the columnist Peter Madden writes, the more it continues to get in the way of advertising. While a bit dramaticized, Madden is essentially saying that we spend so much of our time getting to the computer to tell friends we haven't seen in years that we're on our way to the grocery that we forget to enjoy now.

This also brings the question of how exactly advertisters are supposed to get the attention of individuals when they are in "such a dizzying mess" of communication. "Oh that's right, maybe create a fan page for Lysol. Blah," says Madden. How effective is such a strategy though? I know that I personally look at fan pages as something else to provide clutter to my profile, in which case I don't pay any attention to them.

I've always seen Facebook as a growing phenomenon, but I never quite realized how much of a "freak show" it's become until reading this editorial. Why do the things that pop up in our news feed become information we carry into our everyday converstation? It's what we talk about with friends. Like the article mentioned, even the number of friends we have has become a competition.

Facebook has also replaced face-to-face communication. It's how we find out a high school friend is now dating someone new or how we learn of someone's engagement... all instead of getting a phone call like they used to do. So much for personal friendships. Facebook has taken over and redefined those too.