As explored previously one of the most interesting cultural shifts in terms of the online social network is the issue of trust. Social groups are demanding transparency, and the power of the network suggests it is more effective to pay attention to what the group wants rather than try and control the group.
After all, in the forum of sociology and the agency – structure debate one can say that an individuals status in society is no longer what they themselves think, but what other people think, so therefore the power lies in the group and not the individual.
The possibility for information manipulation is ever present. There are ways in which in which advertisers have failed when trying to manipulate the social graph to their advantage:
QLD Tourism campaign, Witchery fake Cinderella Story from earlier this year and subsequent analysis
Aswell as examples where they may have succeeded: Fbi Radio's Ask Richard campaign and the wonderful still free project by Marc Ecko.
The difference between the successful and the unsuccessful manipulations of the social graph is where the line was drawn when deliberately trying to deceive an audience, with no real intention to cause dialogue, but simply to deceive in order to create traffic.
As Nick Ellery writes on his Blog Marketing is a dirty word; this is no different to spamming. In fact, it is probably getting closer to phishing than spamming, as it is deliberately misleading and getting viewers to engage with video / messages they wouldn’t otherwise if they knew it was not genuine.
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