Social Networking

Ever since Social Networking sites became popular, not only personal use, but also some corporation started to adopt with this new way of communication. These technologies definitely can be useful for advertising and marketing. Advertising through Social Networking sites is sometimes more influential because consumer's behavior has changed after those technologies got launched. People used to get most of information from TV, newspaper, or radio; however, more and more people spend time with their computers today. That's probably the most efficient way for them to get information. By throwing one question on a Social Networking site and get numbers of answer, market research can be done by less amount of time consuming. Advertising can be done with a lot less money than it used to be.

One of the biggest issues regarding to Social Networking sites is a personal attack. In my country Japan, some of schools have their own Social Networking sites created by students. On those sites, users can say anything about their schools, teachers, and friends. However, an identity of users are undefined, so if one user pick up someone from a class, post bad things about him, and them a lot of people follow, it can be a cause of a problem of bullying. Some students have committed suicide because of that. It may sound ridiculous to kill themselves because someone talks behind on web site, but also it is understandable that students at that age, their communities are everything about their lives. The most difficult point of solving this issue is because teachers and parents are unable to find out who says what. I hope the law of management gets more strict and parents and teachers take this issue more seriously, then this problem gets solved in near future.

Unlike facebook, most users of twitter are middle aged. One of the reasons why only a small amount of teenagers adopt with twitter is because they tend to have their society which they don't let outsiders to come in. On facebook, users are able to choose who can view their page, who can be their friends. On the other hand, twitter is used to connect with various people from a different society. Also twitter has a use of broadcasting celebrities. What they say on twitter explore immediately to their followers, then it sometimes becomes a big news. Although it is believed that young generation leads the way to popularizing things, twitter achieved a huge success by attracting adults. In the future, more and more Social Networking sites that target adults will increase its popularity. 

Source: Who's Driving Twitter's popularity? Not teens. Miller, C. (2009 Aug, 25)
New York Times.