Last week in my Mass Communication & Society class I gave a presentation on Advertising. One of the articles I found to supplement my presentation was a Washington Post article from August of last year called "Barging into the Blogger's Circle; Web Logs Are Fertile New Territory for Introducing Products, Welcome or Not."
The article talked about this idea of the "digital grapevine" through which "companies can reap the marketing rewards of free publicity, higher rankings on search engines & immediate access to conversations with consumers." In the article, several avid bloggers commented on the desireability of this, that is marketers using Blogs to dissiminate product information. Some said they were not bothered by it and are happy to allow marketers and advertisers on their sites in exchange for the newest products and product news while others felt this practive made their blogs less credible to their readers in addition to taking the fun out of the whole blogging experience (turning it into a consumer vehicle and not a place for people to share ideas and insights with others).
In thinking about this, I thought what a perfect article to share in my blog. What do you guys thinks about this "digital grapevine?" Is allowing marketers and advertisers onto your blogs selling out or just business?
If you want to take a look at the whole article, I could not find a direct link but if you go under the library Web site and connect to Lexis Nexis, and search the title, it is the first one to come up. It's quite an interesting article. Enjoy and let me know what you think!
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The idea of digital grapevine is definitely an interesting one. On one hand, it is brilliant for companies to use social network sites like myspace or facebook to advertise. On the other hand, do I really need to see these advertisements when I am gathering my thoughts?
So many people utilize these webspaces, therefore it seems fitting to taget them there.
Although it does not bother me to see banners of advertisements, it does irritate me when you get the pop-up ads that end up taking you to different sites! It can be quite frustrating to express your thoughts and suddenly find yourself on a diferent webpage!
Overall, I think it is business. Is there really a difference from posting an adverstisement through a webspace and posting an advertisement through television?
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