Out of all the social media sites available to the public, Facebook is one of the most prominent. It not only allows individuals to connect with others all around the world, but also provides an outlet for businesses to market their products and has brought a whole new level to viral marketing. Although it may be one of the fastest ways to exchange information, it is often criticized because it allows people to share ideas at the click of a button which somewhat undermines the ideas being shared. With that being said, while I may not use Facebook as a reliable news source, it is embarrassing to admit I often discover breaking news from what my friends post on Facebook; for example, I found out that Osama Bin Laden was dead on Facebook.
From marketing, to connecting with friends, to being a news source, it is obvious that Facebook can function as many different tools depending on the user. Recently I came across a blog called AllFacebook: The Unofficial Facebook Blog that posts excerpts about Facebook all day everyday. It provides information on what Facebook is doing as a company, for example, their recent purchase of Instagram. It also posts information on how to get more "likes" on Facebook, who to market to on Facebook, the war between kids and parents on Facebook and political parties using Facebook. This blog shows just how big Facebook has gotten because it not only has an audience that uses it's site for social media purposes, but also has followers who are interested in Facebook as a brand. In a way, this blog kind of acts like a Facebook for Facebook where people can posts updates specifically about FB and make comments all pertaining to the FB world.
http://allfacebook.com/
You are making a number of different observations here that could be more clearly tied to digital journalism, which readers of a blog called "Digital Journalism" will expect. But it would be useful to make those connections more explicit. How does your own reading of Facebook relate to Palfrey's arguments about how "digital natives" supposedly read the news? How is the meaning of "news" changing in the age of Facebook when "news" is also an online feed rather than just a segment of the broadcast media? In the second part about marketing, how does marketing and PR relate to the enterprise of journalism in the digital age?
ReplyDeleteI also thought that you would be interested to see that the death of Osama Bin Laden was on the list of the top eight stories to break via social media. See the infographic in the blog entry of one of your peers here: http://ucsddigitaljournalism.blogspot.com/2012/04/traditional-journalism-no-more.html
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