Seeing younger generations on social media sites are becoming more and more common. Why?

Goals of Social Media Sites The ultimate goal of social media sites is to have the public join them. There are many ways companies try and persuade you to join. They can easily catch the attention of those of the younger generations

As a an intern.. Working for a social media site I understand that our goal is to also gain more users to remain successful and have recognized techniques that other social media sites have used to persuade audiences to join them.

Take for example Facebook’s commercial on their new device the Home App. ch?v=22LY8KbfgME At first, the commercial open us with grandma rambling on about a boring trip to the grocery store at the dinner table. Sitting next to her, a teenage girl takes out her phone and opens up the Home, Facebook app. As she look at a picture someone has posted the dining room all of a sudden contains a drum set and a boy playing those drums.

The next scenes include avoiding more of grandma’s speech.. The sound of the drum solo drowns out grandma’s monotone voice and the situation isn’t boring anymore. As she leaves the picture, so does the drummer and drums and the audience can hear grandmas rambling on clearly. The girl slides to another picture of a ballerina and the girl comes several ballerinas performing throughout the dining room, even on the table.

No one wants to sit through a family dinner right? Facebook shows that bad experiences are clearly avoidable through the use of Facebook. Although they are introducing their new product they wouldn’t forget to include the audience that doesn’t have Facebook yet. They persuade the audience, everyone including young and old that with Facebook you can experience life and adventure right through the convenience of the phone that’s right in your hand.

What is Facebook Home? The Home by Facebook is “software designed to bring the things you care about to the front of your phone. See the latest from Facebook and other apps right from your lock screen”.(Facebook) You can look at your look at everything the Facebook site provides and it even mentions you can decorate your phone with pictures from Facebook all from the convenience of your main screen.

The use of Pathos Pathos, the pity or pain we feel from a piece of material we look at our read, is the main source of persuasion they use in the Facebook Home commercial. The girl is obviously bored and I believe she is meant to make the audience feel sorry for her. Even the dining room she is in is grey and dusty. The colors used in the scene add to the pity we, the audience, feel for her because the situation she is placed in dull and dragging on.

Logos/ Ethos? Logically, there can’t be a switch in rooms where there are suddenly ballerinas dancing on the table or snow starts falling from the ceiling. Finding ethos… I don’t see any reason why the commercial brings any support for the Facebook team who made the video. So, the theoretical perspective of the commercial is the use of pathos. It of course is not a strong amount of pity we have for the girl but, enough to make the situation understandable for the audience. It is also important for Facebook to always end in a happy, positive note.

In Conclusion Here, the introduction was the new app Facebook Home, where we learned that Facebook gave their audience the idea that situations they don’t want to be in can be avoided by the use of this app. They are making the argument that it is possible through Facebook to avoid boring, awkward dinners with family and instead enter a world of your own, surrounded by people you actually want around you.

How can we use this information to benefit Twitter? Twitter can easily make these persuasive commercials, and without new apps too! By using pathos, Twitter can grab the audience’s attention making them feel any way they want to and by joining the Twitter sphere can turn that frown upside down. Twitter can be a getaway just like Facebook says they can offer. Not only can Twitter use pathos but, the other theoretical perspectives as well. Logos and ethos could be just as effective as pathos. By proving that it is logical to use Twitter, we could catch a whole new audience’s attention and get those people to join. Twitter could use ethos to convince people that Twitter is of good character and the audience sees that might use that as a deciding factor as to whether to join.

Which is more fun? Bored..Exciting!