Facebook, The Medium for My Medium.

     When I was first trying to decide on a platform in which to advertise my digital media production (The Hosting Facade) my initial thoughts were to place it on WHT (Web Hosting Talk), which is a prominent resource in the web hosting community for both buyers and sellers. However upon closer inspection I realized that advertising my website in such a place wouldn't be appropriate as the main purpose of my website is to expose the wrongdoings of web hosts, many of whom use WHT themselves. I came to the conclusion that placing a potentially controversial website as mine on WHT could potentially cause me personal problems, as well as legal problems.

     Since my digital media production is a website and the content is static (on my servers) I feel that Facebook is a fulfilling alternative to WHT based on its user count (1.01 Billion as of September 2012), it’s sociability and its overall recognizability, and its viral marketing capabilities. Using Facebook’s status feature I wrote a simple sentence with a link to my website for all of my friends to see asking for their feedback and to re-share the post with their friends. (Facebook Status Update) . I felt that Facebook was a good alternative to WHT because like WHT it offered a modern web 2.0 Rich user interface as defined by (O’reilly), as well as a networked participatory plethora of content created by its users. In “Streams of Content, Limited Attention: The Flow of Information through Social Media" Danah Boyd illustrates the idea that web 2.0 is participatory in nature, meaning that users can interact with the content, create new content and even offer feedback. Facebook’s unique design allows it’s users to instantly receive feedback on their thoughts and ideas, it allows them to share content with others and it is a constantly buzzing with information. When users see something they like on Facebook they can “Like” the post or they can share it. By counting how many times my post has been shared I could create a strong statistical model for how many people are truly seeing and taking an interest in my digital media production.

     Since my website is essentially a web 2.0 product as a service that I want people to use, viral marketing through Facebook is an appropriate tactic to use in order to increase my website’s viewership (How Do I get My Website Out There?). By using so called “smart” viral marketing techniques for example creating specific groups of friends that can see my website-related status updates I can more successfully advertise my website to specific target audience(s) in order to avoid my actions being seen as spam like by individuals with no interest in web hosting. This in conjunction with sponsored stories (Facebook Turns Friend Activity Into New Ad Format) allows for the endorsement of my website by individuals who like my website and endorse it overtime. Adding to my websites creditably over time, its users can endorse it to their friends to whom their friends and colleagues can endorse to their friends and so on and so forth thus taking an advantage of an established web 2.0 participatory organism, Facebook.