Facebook and Data Visualization and My Super Cute Dogs
First of all, 90% of my photos are of my dogs. The rest are wedding photos, with a few pictures of my husband and I doing Krav Maga or shooting guns.
I have been paying attention to what I post lately, and what someone might gather from me. I will be honest and say that I haven’t seen any correlation with some of the ads I’ve seen and my photos, but I know there is a lot of information that could be gathered from my photos about myself and my husband. I have selected a few photos and would not only like to point out how adorable my dogs are, but also what may be relevant to someone studying/researching Facebook photo
This is Billy. He normally goes by Peewee. To the left is him and his big sister, Banshee. I chose this photo because as I mentioned, most of my photos are of my pets. This is relevant because someone might utilize the large quantity of dog photos to target me for pet supplies, and extra pe
t crap that I don’t need. I do look up a lot of cute dog stuff on Etsy, and I am a HUGE sucker for cute dog accessories. Someone who posts as much about their dogs as I do would probably fall for advertising of cute dog accessories or donating to an animal charity. I may also be more inclined to click/respond to charity events/adoption events for dogs. The sheer volume of dog pictures probably tells people that I spend a lot of time on facebook as well, but who doesn’t
Here is another photo that is usually my profile picture. This is my husband and myself at my wedding. What is interesting to me about this is I got more ads on my facebook about wedding planning AFTER my wedding than I did before. Probably because I posted a lot about my wedding/photos of it after. This image (as well as the others on my page) probably would target me and potentially my husband who is tagged in the photo for formal wear. I asked him about the ads on his facebook, and apparently he is getting a lot of advertisements ab
out “being a dad”, adoptions, or baby items. We don’t currently have children, but I have been getting those, too, and I can’t help but wonder if we are being targeted because generally that is the next step after marriage. And if it is honesty hour, I have to be honest that I do click on those links and it has made me think a lot about having children. I have also bookmarked a lot of these pages on my browser, too. Good job, Facebook!
My husband and I also have just gotten into guns recently, and have been posting photos of us going to the range. Photos like these might open us both up to a lot of things. I have tagged this photo of my husband, so it would affect him, as well. Everything from gun accessories, ranges, etc., could target him. Also, the range we went to in this photo was in Fuquay, and I noticed that the photo says “Fuquay-Varina” in the caption. I never even checked us into this place, but somehow my phone did. This can present more information to big data, as it can target location, interests, and him and I both. 
I suppose
I’ve never thought about how much my photos can say about me, but when it comes to Facebook’s location sensing and the “tagging” feature, a picture is really worth a thousand words!
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Hey Samantha! I found it so interesting how effective Facebook advertising was for you. Do you like the advertising? Is Facebook’s advertising spot on here, or are there other products you would prefer to see over the wedding/family & dog products?
Some of these posts make me think that I need to let ads pass through on Facebook. I’ve had them blocked for a while, and I’m very curious now what would come up on my sidebar.
Samantha,
I thought this post was really cool, and I was amazed at how accurate it seems that Facebook is targeting you through ads. I can completely relate to the dog products! While I do not post about my pets a ton, I have tagged a dog account in a photo before, and it did not take any time before I had products related to my dog appearing in many places. I think that the “parent” ads are actually very interesting. I would expect those to pop up if you were posting baby pictures, but the idea of a company targeting newly weds or just wedding pictures in general is actually very intelligent. I know I would not have thought about that.
Great post overall, I really enjoyed it!
Haha, it’s almost scary to think that ads may be influencing and guiding our lives when it comes to children! That’s really interesting that you guys began getting those types of ads after you posted about your wedding! Also, your comment about being tagged in Fuquay is scary too! J.J. had mentioned in class a while back that our phones track us unless we explicitly turn that tracking off. Until recently, this wasn’t something we had to worry about!
Cute Dogs! Great post.
Wow, that’s really interesting that you’ve been getting baby advertisements after your wedding! I think you can kind of see where advertising fails as far as trying to get you to buy wedding stuff after the wedding, but it also shows how clever it can be as far as the baby ads. It’s even crazier to think about how it’s getting you to think about having a baby; it certainly takes the idea of creating customers to a whole new level.
A very compelling post Samantha! I think it’s interesting how you noted that you may get targeted for, “a bunch of pet related crap that you don’t need” based on social media posts, but you also said that you would probably be vulnerable to bait-click ad’s of cute dogs, pet accessories etc. I am the same way with my hobbies, and this is such a good example of the kind of power data targeting has over us. I think most individuals would like to think that they’re not susceptible to a “stupid ad” but the reality is we do fall for the marketing sometimes because it’s usually related to what we love! Love your wedding photo, great post!