Week 2
Social Networks Sites as Networked Publics
The part that stood out to me the most was under Transformation of Publics: "In network publics, attention becomes a commodity"...and, I would add, a business. An example of this would be companies managing their Search Engine Optimization, in other words, managing the attention that their website, blog or other social networking accounts receive. This is taken a step further when companies depend on the 'attention-received' to measure sales, also known as return on investment (ROI). ROI can be crucial to a company's success rate, this is why SEO is micro-managed. SEO management is beneficial by showing the audience's response to material that the business's social media sites are posting.
The reading also said that it is important to know your audiences in order to--in a way--support their desires. For example, I worked for an Orthopedic Massage company that specialized in physical therapy for athletes. Knowing my target audience, I would post running memes, self-massage articles, health tips, and exercise videos. I realized that these posts gained a lot more attention than the generic "Come get a massage" post on Facebook. The audience was a lot more engaged in the more applicable posts. This audience attention grabs google's attention and determines the business's rank on google (whether it is the first, or last). In essence, I feel like It's more so of a popularity contest because attention can determine the business's standing and its success in the network publics world. But does this race for the the #1 spot put the quality of the product/service into questioning? is it genuine/disingenuous?