Weekly Analysis #4

This topic was a bit trickier than the others, since my artifact, Facebook, is not a movie, book, song or television show; however, based on our readings from this week, I would say both the convention and invention components of pop culture formulas can be applied here when thinking a bit outside the box.

Facebook, being a social media site for individuals, as well as businesses and other types of organizations, is used as a means for us to communicate with others across the world any time we want. As many know, Facebook was not the first of its kind, nor is it the only one in existence today, leaving room for others in the social media realm to have similar purposes. This is where the convention component comes in to play. According to our readings, convention is defined as, “those elements that do not change from example to example“ (Franklin.edu, 2013). The convention aspect of Facebook is that it is an outlet for others to communicate with one another via the internet. Facebook, like its competitors, such as, MySpace, Twitter, Google+, and various Yahoo! chat rooms, all have the same repeating theme among them, which is to communicate with others over the internet. In each of these social media sites, the expectations of its users is that we can go on any one of these sites, find someone we want to ‘talk’ to and do so in a matter of seconds without ever speaking a word to one another. With that said, however, though they all have the same purpose behind them and accomplish virtually the same thing in the end for their users, they all have their own unique way of displaying the information we share, as well as what, and how, we see others’ information. This would be the invention component.  

            To compete with one another, each of the social media sites above need to have their own ‘inventions’ to distinguish themselves from the other social media players. For a while, MySpace was a big hit and Facebook was not very well-known, since it limited the type of users in its early days. Now, however, it has expanded its user-base and is the leader in the social media world and MySpace has fallen by the waste side in recent years. To distinguish itself from the others, Facebook created what is known as the ‘newsfeed’ and the ‘wall’. Other social media sites may have similar versions of these features but these terms are somewhat synonymous with Facebook – it is one of their inventions. Other notable ‘inventions’ of Facebook are Fan and Community pages, the ‘like’ and ‘poke’ functions, and the various pop-up ads that users see in their newsfeeds. These inventions help set Facebook apart from its competitors.

            I get on Facebook every day and up until now, never thought much about the strategic aspect of it; that is, how developers methodically lay out their website to entice its users and keep us interested. After going through the readings and applying these theories to my pop culture artifact, I believe these formula concepts can be applied to just about anything in popular culture. There is always a theme among competitors, known as the convention component, but it is the invention piece that sets one another apart and determines who the leader is in the market.

 

 References

"Learning Outcomes: 5.1 Conventions." Web log post. My.Franklin.edu. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2013. <https://my.franklin.edu/myfranklin/GetCourseView.do?sectionId=35546#course-object-1328640098683>.