Facebook: Is it really your choice?

So, even though I am technically not creating these posts in chronological order (in the order that they were invented), I wanted to begin my blog by discussing the effects that Facebook has had on consumer behavior and our everyday lives. This decision is based solely on the fact that Facebook is forcing us to go through a major change with our pages by making us change our entire format to Timeline (can you tell that I am not happy about it?).
As we all know, Facebook is a website that was created to keep people connected to not only their friends but also to the rest of the world. Facebook is said to let you express yourself; your opinions, likes/dislikes, friends, interests, your location (which in my opinion, is kind of creepy), your relationship status (f.b.o.= facebook official), and pretty much anything else you want people to see (and some things that you don't want people to see). Facebook makes it seem like you are the one in control, you can look at things that you want to look at and avoid things that you want to avoid; why, then, are we being forced to conform to something that we may dislike? Since we are having to go through this change on what has come to be our social life-line, I have begun thinking more in depth about what else is out of our control as consumers using Facebook.

When you log on to Facebook, it brings you to your homepage with status updates and if you look closely, you will see advertisements strategically placed on the left hand side of your screen, right below birthdays and events. Coincidence? I think not! While I am not saying that Facebook is controlling our every thought with these advertisements, I am saying that they are trying to influence our consumer behavior for the clients that they are advertising for. They do this by using our Facebook to find our interests and strategically place ads that match our personality best. So, even though we may not realize it on a daily basis, this website that we all love and rely on so much is just like every other business; at the end of the day, they are trying to make money, and the way that Facebook makes money (since you do not have to pay to have a Facebook page) is to help other business get their word out in the world, and hopefully influence consumers to purchase that company's product or service.
In this day and age, strategic ways for influencing consumer behavior is all around us and (as I have been and will be stating with all of my blog posts) most of this increase can be credited to the technological advances that we (as consumers) have been experiencing in the past decade or so.
Until next time!

By the Way: Technology Scares the Bejeezus Out of Me!

So to kick things off, I thought I would first introduce myself and why I have chosen to analyze consumers on the topic of technological advances; my primary reason for choosing this topic is because I am one of the least tech saavy people that I know. I run when I see an IPad, I cringe when someone talks about Twitter, and IPhones, forget it!
                                  
                                   (This is what I think of when I think "high-tech")
I think this fear began at a young age; my family got our first home computer (remember the ones that weighed like 100 pounds, just the screen!) when I was around 8 years old, and while I enjoyed playing School House Rock and Sabrina  Teenage Witch games and recording songs on the microphone with friends, even then it scared me. By the way the three things that I just listed above were about the only three things that I was able to sufficiently accomplish on that beast of a screen. Then came the Internet; while this new search engine proved useful for school projects and talking to friends (AIM), it also proved very tedious and slow. This was were my frustration for technology first set in. Do you remember the days when we would have to re-boot our computer, wait ten minutes, then log on to our dial up connection, wait another ten minutes, then finally we were able to type something into AskJeeves and we would have to wait another ten minutes; I get frustrated when my computer takes 30 seconds logging me on to the Internet these days!

Fast forward to present day: now a days we have a machine to do pretty much anything for us, from giving us automated directions, to calculating any mathematical equation we can think of; although many of these things were only created a few short years ago, it seems that these machines have begun to take over our world. Technology is in our everyday lives; even as I am writing this right now, I am using a computer, on the Internet and blogging (can you believe it)!!! Me, a tech idiot, and even I have broke down and begun using the things that I once feared. Technology is not only in our everyday lives, but it also influences much of what we do, how we do things, and the steps we take to get there. Technology is ever evolving and consumers just can't help but want to stay up to date with these advances; that is why technology is such a hot topic with consumers these days, and that is why I chose to analyze consumer behavior when it comes to technology.

Well until next time!