Author Archives: Jessica Chu-A-Kong

This being my last blog, I wanted to discuss a service that acknowledges the growing internet dependency and social media usage. This article lists the best times to Tweet for you to get the most exposure. The website is basically an advertisement for a service called Garious which is a Tweet scheduler for professionals to market themselves and their businesses. Garious argues that Tweeting at 9 a.m. gets the most exposure because “you can target people coming to work in America and Canada’s West Coast, you can tweet to tweeple at lunch time in the East Coast, and you can have your tweets reach as far as London where  Britons are calling it the end of another work day”. I, myself, do not have a Twitter account to test this out, but the article’s claim seems valid.

This started out as a useful social media tool for businesses to get their name out there, but this other Garious advertisement offers their services to social media addicts who feel that they need help with managing their time. It seems a little ironic that these internet addicts are using another online resource to control their social media obsession. Garious offers their services to “pre-schedule your tweets and other social media activities”. It seems that the future of some online services will be, strangely, along the lines of trying to curb internet addiction. In a way, Garious is a useful tool for those who spend a majority of their time marketing their business online, but could possibly be used by internet addicts who want to manage their time better by planning social media activity beforehand.

We all know the internet has an extensive amount of influence over today’s society. Our class discussions revolve around the impact of social media on people and their interactions with each other. Our final project for this course includes our construction of our own Tumblr page which relates to this article that I found on Social Media Today. The article gave me some insight on what to include in my final project and may help you too in order to grab attention. It also shows us what we, as consumers, go after and the marketing tactics that appeal to us. When you break down the elements of popular pages of Facebook and other social media, there are several noticeable similarities.

The first common aspect of popular Fan pages is that they include eye-catching content such as “images with text, images alone, video, text, external links, and polls”. This data reflects our desire to be entertained by social media. People want variety and change along with a way to connect. It is only human nature to socialize, so pages that allow feedback are attractive to social media users. The article also reported that the top reasons fans choose to follow a page are that they are “being treated in a special way by the brand and can be spokesman for [the] brand” which shows that consumers want attention. It is natural for people to respond better to brands that seem concerned with them and give them special attention. There is a lot of psychology behind marketing that is often found in the way we may conduct ourselves through social media.

Although many of us girls (and maybe some guys!) are past the Seventeen magazine stage, the popular magazine released a pertinent study, surveying 10,000 guys and girls ages 16 to 21, that concluded that “Facebook plays an important part in how amorous teens make a connection.” Many of us do fall into this age range so perhaps this study could be relatable to your own personal life. According to this article “Boy Meets Girl: How Facebook Functions in Modern Romance” from Mashable.com, Seventeen magazine had pretty substantial findings that included “10% of people have been dumped over Facebook, and the same number would just change their relationship status to ‘single’ to cut a lover loose.” The study did not include how long these relationships lasted for or the ages of the parties in the relationship, which may play a role in sorting out that 10% of responders who have been dumped over Facebook. The study from Seventeen also found that “72% of those surveyed said that talking to someone online brings you closer to them [in real life].” This last finding was a bit surprising, but somewhat sensible, as many people complain about how Facebook and social media mediums are completely replacing communication. However, I can see that talking to someone on Facebook is communication to them nonetheless; sharing thoughts and ideas can be done over the internet which may still lead to an online bond.  

Coming from a teen magazine or not, the study underlines the fact that internet communication is becoming a strong branch of personal human interactions.