Johanna Blakely Might Be Right

I agree with Johanna Blakely’s argument that social media is changing the way companies look at people. Before social media existed, companies tried to do studies to find out more about the consumers they were after and what they wanted in a product. They would classify them by age, gender, and sex. These classifications were rigid and they would separate the data by the different types of people. Johanna Blakely is arguing that this no longer exists and companies don’t do this style of polling and classifying anymore and I agree. They can get so much more information off social media sites in the matter of minutes than this. The other reason this doesn’t work is because sometimes people of different gender, sex, and age don’t like the stuff you might necessarily believe them to. Social media allows these people to go on and share their ideas with the whole world. They are personally producing immaterial labor for these companies. They are working on creating a self-brand for themselves by “liking” particular foods they like, “retweeting” clothes they like, or “pinning” artistic ideas they like. This labor isn’t manual labor, but still takes time and effort to produce a certain brand they want to portray to their followers or the whole world. Companies benefit the most from this by being able to go online and find out instantly what products people are wanting at the current time. This online activity also is going to be more females than males. Studies have proven that females spend more time online than males. This will show the companies trying to get business that social media advertisement might be the best place to advertise for women’s products. This trend might be slowing down though, as the number of males on social media goes up dramatically the younger they are. In the coming generations more males might partake in social media. Social media has become a perfect avenue to explore in advertising and finding what customers want with them displaying all of their likes and interests. This is what is undoing the traditional classifications that have always existed. People can see that all females under the age of 18 might not enjoy the bachelor even though before, they would have been classified under liking that show. Social media is changing the landscape of all parts of life, one of them being the end of gender. I agree with Johanna Blakely and it is a very interesting trend.