Lesley Westerfer

I’m glad someone prominent is calling out Facebook. Remember the days when you needed to have a college email address to be on FB? I wonder if things would be different it that were still the case.

I think there should be age restrictions on social media, I know there technically are, bu there are too many ways around them at the moment. Why can’t FB or Insta operate as a sportsbook, making you upload your gov issued ID to verify participation in the platform. Would that help curb some of this?

I wrote about it in my first e-portfolio, mental health is being affected by social media. I seriously worry about the gen x’ers and below, hell even my mental health gets affected by it, and I don’t even use facebook. I worry that we’re going to devolve into a society like that in the Black Mirror episode Nosedive. Evaluating other humans not on who they are, but on their social media klout and that is not how it should be.

This is so complex. So, so many layers in fact that I’m not going to pretend to understand it. However, I will note that while watching the hearing and news reports that followed, I did notice what seemed to be Republicans and Democrats agreeing on the need to rein Facebook in if you will. They agreed on the need to examine the algorithms that drive popular content and even discussed the need to amend an old law, Section 230, to stop protecting and let private citizens sue FB and other social media companies for what they perceive as personal harm done by their respective algorithms. The expressed unity for a moment felt like a glimmer of hope.

I echo Dan’s concerns about the mental health impact of social media on youth…well, on all of us but especially kids and teenagers.
Your post prompted me to Google existing laws, or I should say one single law from 1998: the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), and of course, one of the first search results was a study titled “How Facebook Beat COPPA” (https://scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1721&context=shlr)
On top of the fact that it doesn’t apply to teens ages 14 to 17, the 1998 law gives Facebook wayyyy too much cover when it comes to validating age. At this point we’ve all seen the documentaries showing how much data Facebook collects on its users, so does Mark Zuckerberg actually expect people to believe that FB doesn’t know (or couldn’t figure out) its users real ages??

If you were not going to post about it I was! I love that you are just stating the situation here and not giving it your opinion. Really opens up the conversation. I personally do not agree with Frances going to congress. They are many bad things in the world affecting millions of people but we don’t do anything about those issues? I have seen great improvements in the last few updates of Instagram at least. Their feature of turning off likes and not seeing likes on other peoples photos has been beyond beneficial to me. Instead of worrying about how many likes these people are getting I am focused more on the photo. I do understand the issue at hand and I think it needs to be resolved but in another sense I think people should control their children and take necessary steps to keep them safe on these social media sites.

The response of Facebook, to me, was a PR disaster as well. Instead of discrediting the whistle-blowers information with hard facts or data, they decided to “shoot the messenger” and attack her character as a disgruntled ex-employee. In my opinion, a lot of top level executives don’t realize the monsters they create from their policies or the unintended consequences that they unleash. Think of how many times we’ve seen the same story before, like for example, the Wells Fargo account fraud scandal when they enabled many of their branches to create fraudulent accounts without the customers consent. There always seems to be a large gap between top level executives and the ground floor.

This really put QR codes into a different perspective for me. Personally, I think the ways you are talking about using the QR codes are not the best but they are great ideas. I struggle on a daily basis with keeping up with users and the best way to target people. You want to have the most up to date marketing but at the same time is this really going to work for your target market? I think about this often and also struggle with this. One struggle I see in my job is having events and seeing if any of the social media campaign I am running are driving results for these. For instance, we had a job fair today and I ran a 2 week ad on LinkedIn and Facebook. Yes, I can see the results of the campaign and how many people clicked on the careers page but I will never know if these people actually showed up to the job fair.

This post underscores what was taught tonight in class that we need to know were our customers communicating and how they are communicating. For instance, I belong to a MeetUp group, a community online that share and experience activities based on their interests. My specific MeetUp group was hiking, and sure enough, it was only a matter of time before REI and Eastern Mountain Sports got their grips on sponsored ads, and offering our group discounts on products if we reviewed them. I think marketing can be more of an act of “listening” then it is talking.

Really love the direction this conversation is going. Lesley, the challenges your are facing are so common in my industry.. As Dan H. pointed out though, it really ties well into our Learnathon.

The design questions your are asking are entirely logical, but they start from a “moment of weakness”. You are assuming that consumer NEED a hard prompt to take action. I’m not advocating against including a URL or a QR code, but don’t restrict yourself to thinking that’s the only way people will engage (I am advocating against creating a vanity URL. They are almost always a waste of time, for reasons I will get to in a second).

What do you do when something catches your interest? More than likely, you Google it.

Trust your message to stand out. Trust your logo to be memorable. Trust your targeting to be on point. And then look to search trends to validate it.

For the minority of people who might scan a code or recall a URL, my experience is that a much larger # of people are more competent than advertisers give them credit. They’ve been conditioned to “knee-jerk” to search when they want info. Try to use that to your advantage.

We’ll talk more about bridging the physical and digital worlds as the semester progresses. Thank you for sparking this discussion!

So much of your post resonated with me Lesley! I agree with what others have said, especially Greg’s point about avoiding vanity URLs – I can’t tell you how many times a supervisor has asked me to include a tiny url or bit.ly link on an ad. No one’s going to type that in! QR Codes are a step up, but still not a guarantee that someone cares enough to use it. To echo Greg and Dan H., I think it all comes down to the ad itself, and making sure you’re reaching the right people in the right channel. If your ad is effective on its own, I feel confident that most viewers will remember the ad and Google it – either in the moment, or later. (But that’s all easier said than done when you have higher ups to answer to !!)

I have seen Reddit go through so many changes, but for some reason it is still not considered a MAJOR player in the social media world. I think part of that might be because unlike other platforms, you are hidden behind a username of your choice. I do see Reddit as a platform that might be a powerhouse that is coming up.

I’m wondering the same thing as Lesley. @Amanda you are an avid user of Reddit already. What do you think it will take to not only keep their existing base when they do go public and what moves will they need to make to position themselves as the powerhouse that you mentioned?

This makes me sad, I did not know this. I adore Reddit, and belong to 15 subreddits. I don’t really notice advertising on the site as much as I do on other platforms, something I am sure will increase with this news. I think unlike any other social platform, Reddit feels like it belongs to the users. To Amanda’s point, going public may shift reddit into a powerhouse. I imagine it will be thought of as a corporate strategy now, for instance I wonder if we see some social media management tools begin to integrate with Reddit. I am fully prepared for the “best times to post on reddit’ posts and ‘how to use reddit for B2B’ etc. that are sure to come with more ‘corporate’ exposure.

I love Reddit, but I am not on the platform everyday. What I find interesting about the platform is that it is somewhat obscure and its users seem to prefer it that way. It has a cool factor in my opinion, stemming from it’s likability, originality, and the quality posts made by its users. Reddit attracts a lot of interesting people, with a lot of interesting views on many different topics. It also attracts oddballs, which adds to the fabric that makes Reddit fun. I turn to if for any off the beat kind of question that Wikipedia doesn’t quite cover. I like threads about my favorite movies, and threads on topics ranging from politics to sports. To answer your question, yes I think it will change and not in a good way, but these things always happen. I think the future of Reddit will be strong as long as they don’t mess with the things that make it cool and unique.

I agree with you, Lesley (and everyone else) that this will change Reddit, likely for the worst for users and better for advertisers (who will have more control over where their ads and promoted content run w/ Reddit’s new “walled garden” approach- link interesting article on that below.)
I respect how clearly Reddit marks promoted posts versus regular posts, and I hope that doesn’t change too much. I also wonder if, as Reddit gains more users and interest from advertisers, if there will be an army of paid Reddit influencers who upvote and go to bat for brands without disclosing their connection? Kinda like those fake review farms for Amazon products.

https://adage.com/article/digital-marketing-ad-tech-news/reddit-hits-100-million-ad-revenue-after-axing-programmatic-ads/2357616

I have only used Reddit a few times in it’s existence. It just never called to me as a platform. However, I have always appreciated the user driven content and how “Independent” the brand has been over the years. If they go public I would assume they might start pushing for a strategy to reach a greater audience. Buy how does a brand, that offers the perfect channel or space for other businesses to leverage the archetype of “Content as Community”, choose a channel for their content strategy? This is what puzzles me.

I use Reddit as well, but not on a constant basis. My boyfriend is more on it than me though hahaha.

Reddit is amazing to get my questions answered. I’ve followed some awesome subreddits for my favorite artists, even Animal Crossing tips (when, like everyone else in the pandemic that owned a Switch, was dedicated to the game) and house plant identifier communities (they always got my back on identifying what plant I just bought from Lowe’s lol.) What makes Reddit so great is that it heavily relies on its independent atmosphere and the people that make up for it. I think the “going public” aspect is a bit concerning in the sense that the community is what *made* the website. Introducing shareholders might just create ad experiences that no one necessarily wanted out of Reddit in the first place, which is why as an “underground” website it stood the test of time.

Very thoughtful comments here, everyone! Reddit certainly does offer a unique experience for its users. We’ve discussed how many of the major (powerhouse, publicly traded) platforms have started to copy each other, especially over the last year. What’s in it for Reddit to stay… *Reddit-y* once it goes public?