How Facebook Marketing Is Violating Consumer Privacy Essay

The use of social media marketing has become a standard way in which organizations advertise their products or services. Social media marketing allows consumers to have immediate access to other consumers reviews or to post a review about a product or service. There is engagement between the company and the consumer (Evans, Dave 2010). Social Media emerged in the late 1980’s when websites such as Prodigy, Compuserve and America Online. Prodigy was first of it’s kind and was known as a ”consumer online service”. Half of the page is devoted to advertising. Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Hi5, Bebo and Orkut are all social media platforms that are utilized as platforms today.

Social media marketing is relatively new to the ?integrated marketing communications systems of several public and private businesses.? (Mercadal, 2013, para. 2) Social media is used by almost sixty-six percent of American adults. (Lanham, 2016) Integrated marketing communications try to connect companies and other organizations with their target audience. (Mercadal, 2013) Therefore, social media marketing strategically looks at demographics of the audiences in each social media platform and use the platforms that match the audience who would be interested in products or services sold. (Smith,

Social media is not new. Facebook has been around since 2004, YouTube since 2005, and Twitter in 2006. What is new is how social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are affecting the way businesses market their products and services. Never before in our history have consumers been able to communicate so effortlessly with each other and with the businesses they frequent. Never before have businesses been able to interact and react to customer feedback so quickly and efficiently. However, just because businesses have the ability to use social media for their marketing and advertising efforts, does not necessarily mean they should. This paper intends to

The rise of social media has been a global phenomenon since internet giant Facebook began, with one in seven people having a Facebook account (Hennig-Thurau, Hofacker & Bloching 2013). This has had an impact on the marketing environment in several ways, with the two most notable being increased active participation and a strong level of networked interconnectedness (Hennig-Thurau, Hofacker & Bloching 2013). These two changes have shifted the power from the marketer to the consumer, as the regular consumer now has access to vast amounts of information and has the ability to amplify their opinion globally (Labrecque et al. 2013). For this reason, it may be argued that in the 21st century, marketing occurs among consumers, and is no longer purely

| First, marketers must realize that they often do not control the content on social media sites. Second, the ability to share experiences quickly and with such large number of people amplifies the impact of word of mouth in a way that can eventually affect a company's bottom line. Third, social media allow marketers to listen. It is no longer one way communication. Marketers now can actually have conversation with customers and get feedbacks. Fourth, social media also provide more sophisticated methods of measuring how marketers meet and interact with consumers than

The way that individuals and businesses communicate and interact has radically changed. With the development of technology and the internet, people can connect almost instantaneously and with very little effort. Social media has come to play a huge part in the way that the world communicates with each other. In fact, a recent report shows that in a single month people spend over 25 hours on social networks (“The Digital Consumer”). With consumers committing that much time to social media sites, social networking has become an important aspect of everyday life for individuals—and businesses. Like most marketing activities, social media marketing poses some risk. However, it is advantageous for businesses to exploit this opportunity, and develop an effective and ethical marketing strategy that includes using social media as a marketing tool.

Derek Powazek, a published author and pioneer of the Internet, once claimed that “If you're not paying for the product, you are the product”. With social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter having an estimate of 2.3 billion active users, the statement remains true today, seen through the rise of social networking sites monetizing user information and turning this to big data. The application of these available statistics allow for various trends to pick up so easily and quickly in the consumer culture. In a world where social networking sites dominate the market, tons of channels emerge as tools for advertisers to capitalize on an individual’s social clout and circle. The invention of this technology has changed the landscape

Over the recent years, new media has impacted on consumers more than ever. With almost half of the global population being active online and 30% of these owning a social media account, new media plays an extremely large role in society. These figures rise drastically each day. Social Media Today states that social media users have risen by a whopping 176 million in the past year (2014) with six new Facebook profiles being created every second. This is undoubtedly a market worth being a part of from a business perspective. Many companies are benefitting from this as they have seen this as an easy way to influence consumer behaviour and pick up on their habits.

In the article ‘The Right to Privacy is Not a Right to Facebook’, Castro (2010, p.1) suggests that there is a growing concern in the content of the social media companies' privacy policy as these companies have been observed to be using their users' private data to provide suggestion products and services to their consumers. While this allows companies such as Facebook and Google to tailor their services to their consumers' preference and need better, Privacy Fundamentalists argue that such targeted marketing has already violated users' privacy rights by exposing private data. In the view of whether companies should be allowed to access the data, the author suggests that it is purely up to FTC to decide whether to conduct legal action in checking

Social media has taken the marketing world by storm. Today, not only do companies have a dedicated Website,but organizations, representative of all industries and sizes, also have a blog, Twitter account, Facebook page and a Youtube channel (Wetpaint & Alimeter, 2009). In fact, social media is the number one activity on the web. Because of this, companies view social media as a critical component to its overall marketing strategy, especially since these tactics are cost-effective and produce results (Wetpaint & Alimeter Group, 2009).

I find this highly invasive and disturbing. A recent rumor holds that Mark Zuckerberg intends to reduce the Ad content on Facebook and this has resulted in a drop in the value of FB stock. I, for one, would be happy to see this rumor become fact. But, this is only a small part of the problem which Harris points out to us. It’s not just Ads, it is the way our personal data is used to manipulate everything we do. We may think we are in control of our time, but by following every “ding” and every tangent presented to us, we are not, actually, in control of our time, at

Successful social media sites are effective for sharing information, for project collaboration, and for communication. One of the advantages of social media is that there is a direct interaction with their followers, from a marketing point of view, this is an ideal situation. Marketers have their target audience’s attention. All they need to do is to deliver their message. Whether one’s goal is to share information, develop a network community for feedback or for promoting a project or idea, social media can be a powerful

For long time marketers have collected data to help in making decisions (Caudill & Murphy, 2000), as E-commerce has become an important part of everyday

The three keys to successful marketing are identifying, targeting, and connecting with the right audience. In today’s technological world, having a presence on social media is essential to marketing success. According to studies, more than half of the population of the United States has a profile on at least one social networking site. Marketers who do not take advantage of social media are missing out on a crucial opportunity to connect with customers, and those who do are ahead of the curve.

In today’s business world, social media is being discussed on a daily basis. This phenomenon has taken over the marketing and advertising industries and has changed the way they handle their efforts to attract customers. There is a big misunderstanding that social media are only popular networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, but as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, social media are “forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and micro blogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos).” The rise of these online communities has given companies an opportunity to engage in conversations with their customers. This in