5. Qualitative Analysis of Commercial Social Network Profiles

Social-networking sites have become an integral part of many users’ daily internet routine. Commercial enterprises have been quick to recognize this and are subsequently creating profiles for many of their products and services. Commercial enterprises use social network profiles to target and interact with potential customers as well as to provide a gateway for users of the product or service to interact with each other. Many commercial enterprises use the statistics from their product or service’s social network profile to tout the popularity and success of the product or service being showcased. They will use statistics such as number of friends, number of daily visits, number of interactions, and other similar measurements to quantify their claims. These statistics are often not a clear indication of the true popularity and success of the product. In this chapter the term product is used to refer to any tangible or intangible product, service, celebrity, personality, film, book, or other entity produced by a commercial enterprise.