LO1 Task 1: Understanding existing social media products.

The 5 social media products that I am going to analyse are:

• Instagram
• SnapChat
• Tumblr
• Facebook
• Pinterest 

Facebook 

Purpose:
Facebook was created so that people can communicate with each other and meet mew people. People can create a profile filled with pieces of information about themselves. Sometimes Facebook would suggest some other people for you to add based on the information on your profile.

Content:
One of the main features of Facebook is the News feed, this makes up most of the Facebook page.The News Feed allows you to see what other people (your friends) have posted on Facebook, the news feed doesn't update constantly so you have to refresh the page when you want to see new stuff things that people have posted. One of the other things that Facebook has is the instant messaging application, this allows you to communicate with other people in a similar way to texting. Each user also gets a personal timeline, anything that is associated with the user for example photos, videos and shared posts are collected over time and it builds up on your personal timeline.

Target user/Membership:
The audience demographic for Facebook has changed over the years, when it first started the audience demographic for Facebook where people who are in the age range of 14 - 25 with 60% of them being female and 40% of them being male. However over the years more people started to use it and business owners used it as a means of advertising. Now there has been 25% decrease in the number of 13-24 users however, there has been an 80% increase in the number of users who are over 54 years old.

Sources of revenue:
Facebook's main source of revenue is advertising however, when compared with other social media networks Facebook has a lower the click-through rate and this has a negative impact on their revenue. The reason for this is that the younger users of Facebook install adblcokers on their web browsers and their devices so that they can see anything of the ads on Facebook.

Legal and ethical issues:
The rapid growth of Facebook has produced a number of legal issues which include:

• Cyberstalking.
• Cyberbullying.
• Privacy.
• 3rd party advertising.

The potential for cyberstalking on Facebook has increased of the past few years due to a wide variety and a easy access to personal information. Users of Facebook regularly include the email addresses, phone numbers, home addresses and other personal information as part of their profile. when this information is put on a public page it immediately opens up the user to being stalked by anyone on Facebook. This problem ties in with privacy, on top of all the information above, statues updates often give away more information than intended. At one point Facebook had considered expanding its own messaging system to include a email platform however, a lot of concerns quickly popped up as people started to question the wisdom in allowing Facebook access to even more sensitive information contained from personal emails. 

There are a few ethical issues that arise from Facebook, one of theses things is that impact it has on other people. Recent studies have shown that Facebook causes negative effects on self-esteem,  with people posting things like holiday photos triggers feeling of envy in other people. This has led to some countries either banning Facebook temporarily or permanently. In Bangladesh, the government has blocked Facebook, WhatsApp, Tango, Viper and many other sites since November 2015.   

Instagram:
Purpose:
The main purpose of Instagram is to share information with other people through the use of photos, the information that you share on this social network app can either be seen by your friends and family or to the general public.

Content:
Instagram uses a follower model that is similar to Twitter, if the user sets their settings to private then you would have to request the follow them and until they say yes you cannot see any of their photos or videos. On the interface there is a home tab and a popular tab. When the user is on the home tab they will only see one photo or video at a time and the timeline will consist of people that you follow. The popular tab shows you multiple pictures or videos at a time. All of the pictures or videos that you see on your popular tab are from users that are in some way connected to you. For example if someone that you follow is following Kanye west he would appear on your popular tab.

Target Audience:
The audience demographic for Instagram shows you that it has over 400 million active monthly users and over 75 million active daily users. Currently 51% of the total number of people that use Instagram are male with the other 49% being female, different trends do have a big impact on the what gender uses Instagram the most. With the rise in fitness regimes and dieting a lot more females have taken to using Instagram.

Sources of revenue:
In the early days of Instagram there was no source of revenue, the website was funded entirely by people investing in it, but in 2012 it was bought by Facebook and now they get their income from advertising. Because it is fundamentally a photo sharing app/website it is a natural platform.


SnapChat:
SnapChat is a photo and video messaging app, snapchat is unique in that all of the photos and videos only last for a small amount of time before they disappear forever.

Content:
Snapchat has many features that allow people to communicate with each other in different ways. The main feature is the home screen and that is where you can take a picture or record a video. From there you can add filters to what you have captured. Swiping left takes you to the instant message page where you take to other people through text, you can also send people private "Snaps" and look at the conversation that you have had with other people. If you swipe right from the home screen you can look at all of your friends stories. Stories are Snaps that last for one day and they can be constantly updated.

Target Audience:
There are around 200 million snapchat users and 70% of those users are female. Things like selfies are considered quite feminine so it makes sense why the majority of Snapchat users are female. 45% of snapchat users are aged between 18-24.

Sources fo revenue:
One of the ways that snapchat makes money is through advertising and this is done through one of snapchats features called 'Discover'. This feature allows media publishers to have daily content featured on the app and at the moment there are 12 publishers on Discover:
CNN, Comedy central, Cosmopolitan, Daily mail, ESPN, Food Network, National Geographic, People, Vice, Yahoo, Warner Music and Buzzfeed. Snapchat charges these companies £100 per thousand views. Companies can also pay to have themselves featured on the stories section of snapchat. the amount that companies have to pay depends on the their stature. Some top brand companies have paid around £750,000.

Legal and ethical:
Snapchat has come under some criticism for making 'Sexting' easier for people to do since the photos that you send only last for a maximum of 10 seconds. Because the pictures disappear people send inappropriate photos through Snapchat without fear. In the early days of snapchat people could screenshot your photos and you wouldn't know a thing. However this started to become a problem so the developers updated the app so that we a person screenshots your snapchat the sender will get a notification. However after some time people have developed apps that will save all of the photos that you receive without the senders knowing anything.
When snapchat had first started it had faced some legal backlash as there app was branded as evidence destroying, however the developers say that they are willing to cooperate with the authorities under these circumstances:

• Subpoenas
• Court Orders
• Search Warrants

However this doesn't mean that snapchat has a copy of all of the photos that people send, the developers doesn't want the users the fear that hackers may hack into the servers and release all of their private photos. But snapchat does keep records about the information on the snaps that are sent, such as what time the snaps where sent, who it was sent to and when it was opened.

a) purpose  (e.g. share information, communicate with friends, meet new people)

b) content  (e.g. personal blogs, photos, audio-visual clips, advertising)

c) target user/membership (e.g. audience demographics/friend networks)

d) sources of revenue (e.g. pay-per-click advertising, impression advertising, banner advertising, corporate pages

e) legal/ethical issues (e.g. libel, copyright, intellectual property rights, privacy, protection of personal data, bullying, stalking, impersonating others, misrepresentation.)