Final Blog Post

It seems to me that these days just about every major (and minor) company is using media such as Facebook, Twitter, etc, in order to gain some publicity. Any company who has not started to use these forms of advertising is considered to be out of touch and is also missing out on a significant part of the market.

One large example that comes to mind right away are those bizarre free gifts that you can give to people on Facebook. They aren't always of branded products. Sometimes they are merely pictures of a dog or something. However often they are connected to something, like perhaps a movie that is being released. I still remember when Friday the 13th came out a few weeks ago how many of these Jason masks I received over Facebook. This is something that is very common. There are all sorts of branded Facebook gifts and it is a very smart and subtle way for a company to gain exposure. Some of the companies and products that I've seen take part in this include: Skittles, Ford, just about every movie studio (and often TV station) that exists, Hershey's, and many, many more.

Twitter is becoming bigger and bigger all the time too. It's a little strange because it wasn't even really on my radar until maybe a month ago. Now I've really started to notice just how many companies are involved with it. Just about every website I go to now I notice a link that says you can follow that company on Twitter. I've now started to do so and it's really amazing some of the things they can do. You can get updates on news storys from a variety of sources. You can keep up to date on movie and DVD releases, which is something that's great for me. Even Torrent sites are up on Twitter now, updating you on all the illegal files you can come and download. There's something pretty mind-boggling about that. Although I do think a lot more companies are using Facebook as a tool at the moment, you can really start to see how many have learned about Twitter and what it can do for them. I think Twitter is something that we're going to see start to grow and grow even more as time goes on.

I really do think that any company who is not using these types of sites for their advertising is really missing out a huge oppurtunity. There is really no reason to not use them because in addition to getting a great deal of exposure to a very large audience, it doesn't cost anything. Plus it brings in a level of interactivity with the consumer that you really can't get with any other medium. This is why so many companies have started to use these methods, and that number is just going to continue to grow.