After writing my research paper on Instagram and its promotion of consumer identity, I decided to further my research and take a peek at how people think Facebook’s purchase of Instagram will effect this consumer identity being formed, especially if Facebook decides to bring in advertisements to Instagram’s feed, as it already does in its own homepage. While doing a quick search on the internet, I came across this article from the CNN Opinion page (http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/11/opinion/mayer-instagram-facebook/) that describes one opinion of Andrew Mayer’s, the creative director of Sojo Studios, a social gaming company. I found his idea very interesting because it closely relates to the issues brought up in my research paper—that user’s posts on the social network are used to advertise products without them even being conscious of it.

He believes that Facebook will use photos posted by Instagram’s users to take advantage of the constant willingness to share our lives with others. Facebook would do this by allowing a user to push their photo posted on Instagram to their Facebook feed, and then, if the photo is promoting a good/brand, Facebook will sneakily turn it into an ad and have it keep popping up on the user’s friend’s news feeds for a longer period of time, so more and more people see it and “like” the photo. This is an important factor, because ads on Facebook only make money if they are clicked on. By making them more “personal” and relatable to people because they are posted by someone these people know, they are more likely willing to check out the ad and click on it. Facebook already does something similar to this with people’s status’ (usually only text), called “Sponsored Stories.” However, by adding images to the mix (from Instagram), the ads have a potential to get even better and more appealing, because everyone knows  that pictures give out a lot more information, and are a lot more engaging, than only words.

Mayer also mentioned that brands have become a large part of our lives, even a part of our identity. This observation interests me because it supports my research of brands on Instagram, and how the many brands on the photo application are easily supporting the consumer culture by promoting users to advertise their products, building their consumer identity. Companies have realized that they can get people to advertise for them without even telling them. Advertising through social network users may become one of the more popular ways of advertising, if it isn’t already. I think that we are so willing to support brands and advertise because we want to be in on the trends. We want to be that person who knows what’s “cool” and promote it. Therefore, even if we don’t realize that we are advertising a brand when we post a picture of ourselves posing with a Starbucks Peppermint Mocha, I am sure we wouldn’t care that much even if we did realize that we were. My question is, do you think people will care if they find out that their Instagram photos posted on Facebook were being remade into ads for their friends to be bothered by on their news feeds? Perhaps the answer is yes, because in that situation, their photo is being manipulated without their consent, and this could bring up some issues.