Dissertation sos

casi_2

Hi all you MSE student money savers!
(Firstly i am not very sure if i am allowed to do this - sorry if your not!)
I have a small favour to ask of you all...
I am in my 4th year (yep I am in Scotland) doing my dissertation in Marketing. I am in the process of writing up my dissertation atm but a meeting with my supervisor today i need to gather some qualitative insights and comments to compliment to my existing data.
My topic is looking at student’s attitudes towards advertising on social networking sites (MySpace, Facebook, Bebo etc) and particularly looking at the ‘dark side’ of advertising on these sites for example companies using user’s profile information to target messages, misleading adverts aka the pink patch, whether you see this as a intrusion of privacy etc.
Any thoughts around the topic and social media in general would be greatly appreciated as well as any examples of bad experiences - your identities will not be used and any comments used in the dissertation will be anonymously reported :-)
The only eligiblity criteria for comments is you have to be 16 - 24 years and a user of social networking sites (to make it consistant with my existing data!)
In return if anyone needs help with their dissertation or any uni projects for that matter i would be more than happy to help :j

MrsManda

casi wrote: »

The only eligiblity criteria for comments is you have to be 16 - 24 years

Only been 25 for a few weeks and already too old for something *sob*

Good luck, I'm sure there's plenty who'll be able to help

Miss_Liquorice

Hi there, (21, female and using twitter, bebo, facebook and a recently myspace escapee) I'm not entirely sure what your question is, but I'll do my best to answer!

I think adverts for any medicial products should only be displayed to logged in users who have show their age to be over 18, likewise any gambling adverts/restricted poducts. If these sites let under 13s on, then they should not display advertisements to them at all (I believe that was a policy with some more child-oriented sites?) Other than that, social networking needs to make money somehow. Product-based pages (so you can become friends with brands) is a more opt-in way which could be utilised by companies, but requires more time, effort & monetary input from the brand.

orangeslimes

I think that some of the adverts on facebook are a bit dodgy i.e the ones about people who earn £1000 an hour really easily doing something on google which are basically a scam (i assume) I don't think that sort of thing should be there.
I'm not sure of the extent to which fb do target advertising to me based on my profile but I don't really like the idea of my information being used that way.
I do like the fact that in facebook you have the opportunity to create your own free advertising though (ie if i was organising an event/starting a business it could be really useful tool - by exploiting the ability to create groups/events for example. Or getting people to change their facebook profile picture etc)
Does that help? Might be useful if you came up with some specific questions.
I am 24 btw.

ames100

hi 22y/o and i use fb and recently twitter
re- facebook the advertising is rubbish especially the pink patch thing and earn so many millions in like 20 mins i do however like the way you can click those little thumbs up thumbs down things to get rid of them however these things dont seem to have a memory as such as they do reoccur- personally i tend to ignore them but it makes you wonder how dodgy companies can get funding on a reputable site?

re- twitter the only thing that annoyed me about them is that when you sign up they have automatic people following you and ones you are following which are advertising but i just deleted them all.

GrammarGirl

I'm 23, have a Facebook and Twitter profile and had a Myspace page for a long time. I see advertising on these sites as an acceptable way to generate income - they allow me to use the site for free. If I had to pay a premium to use the sites but they were free of advertising, I don't think I'd bother.

Facebook's personalised messaging is very clever, but also quite intrusive. I once updated my status with a reference to The Hills (trashy tv programme!) and was sent The Hills-based advertisments for 6 months afterwards!

I find the technology behind personalised advertising clever and interesting, however the adverts themselves don't encourage me to buy the products. I also find most of the advertising on Facebook is centred around weight loss, which is a dangerous message to promote to young, impressionable girls.

I think my attitude towards Facebook advertising is possibly different from other attitudes, as I did a media degree myself and work in advertising. I'm very cynical! However, advertising via social networking is like having a captive audience and I do understand its appeal to certain people.

Cool dissertation topic by the way!