Social Media Questions

1. While the amount of user-generated advertisements increasing in recent years, we still feel it depends on the type of product that is being marketed to the consumer. While Sonic generates commercials that lack professional techniques, but rather have a more amateur, personable feel; many companies still choose to advertise their products in a professional manner. When it comes to fast food, a company like Sonic may try to relate more to the ordinary person by shooting a commercial with a simple camcorder. However, high-end luxury car companies, such as Mercedes Benz, shoot highly professional commercials to associate their products with a high-end product.

Regarding movies and television shows, the success of movies with an amateurish or homegrown feel such as MTV's The Real World and the new hit Paranormal Activity can lead to an increase in these types of media. However, movies such as the newly made Avatar, which made hundreds of millions of dollars more than Paranormal Activity in the box office, will continue to dominate the box office with it's more professional feel. The popularity of reality TV can be attributed to average,every-day feel of its characters. The producers want the viewers to think that they themselves can be in one of these situations.

2. Consumer-Generated Ads (Tags for this article are located in the Labels for the post below)
Some differences in the tags on Digg and the labels we chose include that they tagged almost every major company that was listed throughout the article. They also tagged more random words throughout the article. We felt they might have done this to possibly increase the frequency the article might pop up on random search engines. For example, the article is filed under the category "Food and Drink" simply because Doritos was tagged. However, we did have some similarities within our tags. The main topics covered such as Social Media, Web 2.0, Advertising, Marketers, and CGA were all tagged in both articles.

3. Transparency is an important concept in the Social Media world because it is causing lots of controversy and questioning of the authenticity of people's individual "opinions" within their blogs when they are paid by corporations to promote their product. For example, Pepsi has recently been paying popular bloggers to write about their products in a positive fashion. According to "The Illusion of Transparency in Social Media", bloggers who are paid to write about specific products lose their authenticity. Transparency definitely affects the offline world as it is changing consumer views of products and companies. After reading a popular blog that puts a product in positive light, it may cause them to actually go and purchase the product offline.