Thursday, September 13, 2007

Everyone Is Social Networking


I want to start this blog off by saying that I am not advocating joining this site, or supporting the company that I am going to talk about in this blog; I just stumbled upon an article on MSNBC and thought it was interesting to see all the different kind of people who are turning to social networking, as a way to help promote themselves.

The article that I stumbled upon was titled "Playboy Looks to Court College Students." This article talked about how the Playboy company is going to start a new website that is directed towards college students. The article stated, that the website was going to be similar to the already popular social networking sites Facebook and Myspace. Since magazine sales have been declining over the years, they had to try and come out with a way to gain some more fans. The website is going to be called "Playboy U." This site is only going to be strictly for college students, and they are going to have to prove that they are.

I thought that this article was very interesting because I never realized how widespread social networking is becoming. Playboy is a huge name, and they too are even using social networking to further promote themselves. This proves that social networking is becoming increasingly popular for promotional use, and that it will be around for many years to come.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I think that it is really interesting that Playboy has turned to social networking as a form of marketing and public relations. Although social networking is gaining a lot of popularity, I am beginning to wonder if there are ever going to be rules and regulations established. I can only imagine the content that will be featured on Playboy U and I find it difficult to believe that they will allow only those who can 'prove' to be college students. I think Playboy should rethink this marketing ploy because I think that they will be met head on by angry parents. If nudity is appeared on this social networking site, does that not qualify as pornography? I think that Playboy is pushing it on this one and they need to be very cautious on how the layout, design, and marketing that they plan to do for this new social networking site.

mkeeganwatkins said...

Consider the target audience for Playboy- probably younger, definitely male- and how the readership of print (both magazines and newspapers) has been steadily declining among younger consumers. This marketing tactic, though possibly dangerous, seems like a natural response to the changing landscape of print media.