Throughout our studies on the subject of Material. Imaginaries, and Informational Capitalism we seemed to resort back to the common theme of social media. We root back to this notion of social media in relation to our core subjects of this course for the obvious reason of how valuable it has become in our society, and new frontier of capitalism. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, the list goes on a and on, and so do their users. These outlets of media comprise and are in possession of enormous amounts of data that, we as the consumer consent to let these outlets capitalize on. This data is has become the new frontier of capitalism. Why?
Because this data is so valuable, it hard to fathom to amount of information that these companies have on their prosumers, and the amount of data it adds to their interface. Take the prime example of Snapchat for instance. The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook offered Snapchat $3 Billion, but CEO Spiegal declined. He also declined a $4 Billion dollar offer from Goggle which was also declined. These billion dollar assessments comes strictly from the vast amount of users that Snapchat is home too. The data base is so valuable even though they do not even sell a single good. My question to you is, do you think that these evaluations are far to hight, even though the data bases are large? If yes, do you think the massive companies that are trying to acquire these outlets will realize and make more moderate offers for these data bases?
https://www.cnet.com/news/snapchat-said-to-rebuff-3-billion-offer-from-facebook/
I believe that there is a reason why dominant countries like Facebook and Google are offering billions of dollars to buy off Snapchat. I think it all comes down to acquiring information which in turn will turn to profit. These big companies are always looking for new ways to target in terms of their interests, passions and dislikes. They understand that consumers' data is very valuable because it gives them the opportunity to personalize their marketing more. For example, Facebook sees consumers as data that they can utilize to sell more advertisement space for advertisers. Hence, this obviously goes back to the concept of capitalism that we discussed in class. With Snapchat, we are able to take videos, take pictures and now link it to our phone to share our photos in our mobile devices. This is a huge opportunity for Facebook or other big social media companies to gain information, so to answer your question I think that those evaluations seem very fair.
ReplyDeleteI think that the main reason that companies such as Facebook and Google inquire and bid on acquiring Snapchat for example or other social media giants are because in the long run it eliminates a competitor. By eliminating Snapchat as a competitor Facebook or Google now acquire another app in which they do not exist in that particular stream being the sharing experiences and pictures for a limited amount of time.
ReplyDeleteAlthough Snapchat does not directly sell a physical good it sells the concept of sharing which we have learned about throughout the course. Snapchat also profits off of instances where consumers buy filters that can stick with them for their snapchat lives opposed to what snapchat deems usable on a daily basis.