Travel and Hair Dye, What Do these Things Have in Common?
I love taking pictures and capturing moments so that I can share them with my friends as I’m describing or talking about the experiences I have had. I have captured photos from parties and sleepovers with friends, things I have experience through my experiences in school, to important milestones not only in my life, but in the lives of people I hold dear. My photos are filled with so many different things that I don’t even take the time to think about anymore and this assignment gave me an opportunity to visit memory lane. I think along with most individuals of our generation I can say nearly all of my photos on Facebook were taken with some type of camera phone. I know for most people that is the only camera that they always have on them or even own, because smartphones are making a lot of smaller electronics obsolete.
I haven’t traveled many places, but when I do I have in the past tagged my location as some way of truly proving where I’m at when I post a picture. Such as when I got to travel to Corvallis, Oregon last April. It was the first time I had ever flown anywhere so I found myself taking pictures of everything. I have pictures of what I saw so I could share them with friends and family members I knew had never traveled that far away from the east coast or even outside of North Carolina and Virginia.
I wanted to make others feel as though they could travel as I was doing at that particular moment. I wanted to make myself seem more well traveled than I truly am at the moment. After making this trip, I found not only did I see more ads for travel sites in my side bar, but also in my news feed. Usually I just hide the ads in my news feed, because I could care less about them.
Then there are my numerous photos of my friends and family with random selfies inserted in randomly. I’ve never really been the selfie type of person. Glancing through my profile pictures I find far more of my pictures are me showing off a new hair color. I absolutely love to dye my hair stranger colors and I love to show it off.
I have found that with my various hair color changes (not including my last major hair change), I find myself seeing more ads for hair dyes such as Manic Panic and brands that are known for really producing those bright and wild colors. Other than that I don’t really recall seeming any ads related to what photos I have posted to Facebook. It may be that I just don’t give the ads in the side bar as much attention as some others may. Maybe that is something I should think a bit more about when I post a photo on Facebook.
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I think it’s very interesting that you mentioned the location tagging! I mentioned it in my post, too. Based on that, I think most of my photos are tagged and based on that, facebook can gather where I live, and how far I’m willing to travel to places regularly. That could open up so many doors to how advertisers could target me! They know whether or not someone stays in their own bubble.
Another thing too, is if you are commenting “MANIC PANIC!” or something with the photo, you automatically are becoming an advertiser for them! How cool is it for these companies, when you might make a small comment like that, but not only can they target you, but they know you’ll go to bat for them!?
Hey Kayla. I think you have some trends in your FB photos that might be more clear than the rest of us. I’ve had AdBlock on for a while, but I tend to notice more adverts from Amazon or Google searches. It’s interesting that your photo trends align so well with the advertisements that you see. Did you find the advertising for hair/travel products effective? It seems like companies were able to more accurately advertise to your preferences, but did the important question for companies is whether their advertisements worked or not.
Hey Kayla,
It makes me happy to hear that this opportunity gave you an opportunity to take a trip down memory lane. It’s nice to look back on old pictures sometimes. I agree with Rajan that it’s interesting that your photos do align so well with your photos. You said that you didn’t pay that much attention to ads, but you were able to name a specific brand of hair dye that posts ads on your Facebook. We talked about in class how we tend to pay more attention to pictures of things that we’re interested in. If Manic Panic! posted a picture of someone with a cool hair color would this be enough to convince you to try out this particular color? Just something to think about.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Great Job!
Sarah