Facebook Privacy Issues

In 2012, Facebook pulled the plug on community voting which caused their users to question whether or not the social media site was a site that they wanted to be directly connected with. Although not even half of Facebook users voted on the new privacy changes in December of 2012, 88 percent of those that did vote, voted AGAINST the privacy changes. Facebook was aware of these results and instead of listening to their consumers, they ignored them and took away their rights to vote. 

Many Facebook users are confused with the continuously changing privacy settings because they are written in terms they do not understand. Luckily, for the social media consumers, Facebook has altered the wording in the setting in hope that they will understand the policies better than they have in the past. The continuous changes have made Facebook users disappointed and annoyed with the site. Allowing users only partial control of how their personal information is displayed to other on the site is not considered pro-privacy, by any means. 

Privacy issues and terms of service continue to be of much concern to consumers and users of various social media sites. The increasing number of court cases that are filed because of personal information being leaked to employers or other organizations have cause outrage among the Facebook users. This issue is something that should be solved immediately and should be a fairly reasonable issue to be resolved but instead, social media sites like Facebook try to increase the amount of income they are making through the website, no matter the consequences it has on their customers. 

My Favorite YouTube Video

Choosing my “favorite” YouTube video was extremely difficult because there is such an assortment of videos posted every day. Typically, I go to YouTube to watch music videos, commercials, or “homemade” videos. I have favorite videos in each category but for the sake of this Marketing assignment, my favorite YouTube video is the Coke commercial—“There are reasons to believe in a better world”.

Coke initially came out with this video to promote their 125^th anniversary and referred to the campaign as “sharing their happiness”. I think that it is such an appealing video because it is emotional and relatable and tugs at everyone’s heartstrings. It compares a number of bad things that people think about in the world and replace it with more good things that people are doing in the world that we often do not think about as regularly as the bad. It is an emotional and informal video promoting Coca-Cola and the happiness Coke can bring to people as the other things in the video brought joy to the viewer.

Surprisingly, there are absolutely no advertisements before, in, or around the Coke video. I like that there are no other advertisements besides Coca-Cola because it allows myself as well as other viewers to concentrate on the message that the video was conveying instead of being distracted by other advertisements. Additionally, there are no social media tie-ins that were made obvious in the video. I think that a twitter handle or hash tag would have benefitted the brand but do not think that it took away from the meaning of the advertisement. I do however think that at the time this video was released there were many various Coca-Cola hash tags and social media topics in their favor. Overall, I think that Coke did a wonderful job at grabbing viewers attention and bringing an emotional appeal to the video and allowing customers to remember them as a brand that cares about the consumers.

Take a look at the video: 

Internet Design

I have my many online shopping websites and today I received an email from Tobi. I usually receive and email from then once a day telling me that I receive 50% off of my first purchase. Talking to other friends that have bought stuff from the website, I decided it was a reliable link to click on and check out what they had to offer.

As I explored Tobi’s website, I realized that there were a lot of good elements about the online store. The website was extremely interactive with their clients via social media. On almost every page I clicked on, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter buttons were strategically placed on the top of the page. As I was shopping, they gave me the option to choose different types of clothing and accessories that I was interested in purchasing. As I clicked on a certain category, I could even sort the items by price, newest to oldest and vise versa, as well as what kind of top I was searching for (casual, night time, blouse, etc.). Although Tobi captured my attention and the website design was very appealing, they had some bad elements as well. I thought there were too many items on a single page. As I was looking through the clothing, I found myself getting bored and dizzy because it was too many things to look at on one page. Additionally, the “new items” page did not have a category button so I was unable to look up just “new tops” and instead had to search through each item of clothing before I found a piece that I was interested in.

Once I found a top I was interested in purchasing, I clicked on the button add to cart and it lead me to this page…

 I clicked on learn more and this page came up…

 I did not want to join with Facebook so clicked on “Join without Facebook”

 Then I clicked on the button that said “Join Tobi” which lead me to finish creating my account…

Finally, I was lead to this page that told me to either invite 5 friends or join with Facebook to receive the 50% off. I just clicked on begin shopping now because I was uninterested in choosing either option. 

Finally, I was able to go to "My Cart" where my shirt was located and filled out my shipping address, shipping method, payment information, and final review.

Unfortunately, I was unable to get the 50% off that they had promised me because it required me to connect to Facebook which I denied doing in the previous pages.

Overall, I think that Tobi is a great online shopping website that attracts a lot of customers but I think that they can do a better job promoting their discounts and explain the details before I get the Checkout page and realize that the 50% off does not apply to me. Tobi, along with many other online shopping websites have a lot of great assets for the customers but need to work on keeping their clients on their page and loyal customers.