Post 5- eBay

The website I choose to use was eBay. This is because eBay is on of the largest online shopping centers for bargain cost. By bargain cost, I’m meaning that you can choose what you pay for most of the items that are sold by online bidding. Items are put on eBay by individual wishing to sell their items to a wide variety of audience for a little charge form the company. I would call this the peer-to-peer model because eBay plays as a middleman in the transactions that are performed on the website. When coming to eBay does not play much of a roll for the customer because he or she is likely to use another website called PayPal. This is because your money is safer this way than paying through eBay, which seems to be very inefficient. EBay is a very good site if you are looking for deals because most of the people that post items on the website are in dire need to get rid of it allowing consumers to have an opportunity to receive huge bargains. I have used eBay many times and every time I have successfully saved money on items that I would have normally paid a good but more for. This website is a helpful tool when wanting to buy higher priced items at discount cost if you can master the bidding techniques.

Blog 4

The authors understanding of a convergence culture is “where old and new media intersect, where grassroots and corporate media intersect, where the power of the media producers and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways. What I would say convergence culture is the relationship between different cultures (countries) through media. I say this because in the text it refers to the Osama Bin Laden picture with a character from Sesame Street. All through out the world you are able to get on the Internet and access things that are in America. Like wise in our country we can find books and articles from other parts of the world. Therefore, making the Internet a huge part of convergence culture because it is there for us and is easy to access. This were media history comes in. everything that has been uploaded in the past decades is still on the Internet. We can see how far we have come along by looking at these things. For example, we use to use to only upload picture to MySpace. Nowadays we have just on social media site for that, then we have another for just what we are thinking. We can look back to see hoe much we have grown as a society. Almost everyone participates in media because almost everyone has a Facebook or some sort of social media site. If not most people have a smart phone that they have access to the Internet at any given moment. Our society use to be a print society and has changed completely to a more advanced society with smart phones, tablets, and computers with unlimited connects with anyone around the world.

Advertising

Throughout the past couple years I’ve seen more and more advertising on social media sites. I think that this could be a beneficial way of advertising because everyone is on sites like Facebook and Twitter. For these social media sites to make money they have to place ads on their pages. This gives businesses a chance to advertising on them and put their name out there. One benefit of this is that people all over the world see these. You aren’t just advertising in one region you are advertising to a larger audience. I have noticed on Facebook that many company are making Facebook’s to get their companies name out there. This is a very good idea because its free advertising. When you make a Facebook you don’t have to pay for it and it’s a great way for a large amount of people to see what your company s about. For example my father owns a high-end car dealership. They have a Facebook page that they post all the new cars on that have arrived. This is useful because it allows all our recent customers and friend to see the new inventory without going on the web site. Yes they might not be interested in a car at that time but if someone sees a car that they really desire nothing can stop them form changing things up a little bit. I feel like over the next couple years more and more companies will resort to social media sites because it is an inexpensive or free way to advertise. http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2320367/5-Social-Media-Advertising-Trends-to-Watch-for-in-2014 https://www.facebook.com/lakenormanimports

My understanding of an online identity

My understanding of an online identity is the relationship that users have with chat rooms, online games, and forums. For most online users they attempt to be someone that they are not. This is because the people they are communicating with they will probably never see in the real world. For my online identity I use social media sites. These are a little harder to lie on because they do have your picture and a bio that all your friends can see. One of the social media sites I use the most is twitter to share what I’m thinking and doing on a daily basis. The problem with this is that many employers now look at your social media websites before they hire you. With this being said you have to be careful about what you post or it could hurt you in the long run. I think that social media sites are the new generation of this world. Nowadays everyone has a Facebook. My mom that’s 60 years old has a Facebook and never thought in my life that she would. She uses this site to keep in contact with long lost friends and also to advertise for her reality company. Social media sites use to be just for fun, but now it is used everyday in the business world. For example I work at a car dealership over the summer and every time we get a new car the pictures go on the Facebook page for everyone to see. There have been many times that I’ve asked a customer where they saw the vehicle before coming and they would say our Facebook page. This was very surprising to me but it’s a good alternate way to use these sites.