MySpace & Facebook and their Evolving Social Ads

I read the interesting article by Jeremiah Owyang, the Web Strategist and Sr. Analyst at Forrester Research (Social Computing). He discussed the evolving advertising models that Facebook and MySpace are creating, and it made me think about the work I am doing with my undergraduate students in the Organizational Communication course I am teaching. This article by Jeremiah was all about stakeholder analysis and how the various organizations and populations involved need to communicate their messages while addressing the concerns and issues the stakeholders raise. I thus created an assignment around this article to help explore these issues and relate them to the real-world (as nearly all of my students use FB or MS). We will look at the article and then work and share within small groups / the class what we learn and consider:

  1. What is the article about?
  2. Who are the stakeholder groups identified / involved?
  3. What are the stakeholder issues for each of these?
  4. Choose one of the issues, and determine toward whom or what the issue is directed.
  5. How may that “whom or what” respond to the issue and that stakeholder?

It is nice when our topic of study in the class can relate directly with things happening in the real world. Isn’t that what education should be about? 

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