ASSESSMENT OF TWITTER BAN ON BRAND AWARENESS IN NIGERIA (A CASE STUDY OF RITE FOOD LIMITED, LAGOS STATE )
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Twitter is a social platform that provides users to follow one other and send messages that are limited to 140 characters. Relationships on Twitter may be entirely one-sided, unlike on other social networking platforms. For example, one user may follow another without the later being obligated to follow the first. Twitter burst onto the scene in March 2006, owing to its simple user interface, which stood in sharp contrast to its rivals, who were allowing users complete customization of their personal pages at the time, resulting in a crowded, gaudy appearance (Experian, 2009).
Twitter has always welcomed third-party developers, providing a flexible application programming interface (API) and enjoying unparalleled celebrity appeal (Twitter Counter, 2010). However, despite its widespread popularity and extensive mainstream media attention, Twitter's growth has lagged behind that of Google and Facebook after their respective first three years. Google has 18 million users, Facebook has 27 million, and Twitter has 8 million (Battelle, 2009). As Twitter approaches its fifth year of operation, it can no longer be considered a new kid on the block, but many people are still unsure of its purpose or if it has any value for them. It's "for finding and sharing what's going on in your life right now," according to Twitter. While this is accurate, and regrettably, by its very nature, most of the material posted is ‘pointless chatter,' it fails to see Twitter's economic potential (Java et al., 2007).
Year after year, the internet advertising industry expands, and with technological advancements, there are now more methods than ever to advertise goods and businesses. The ‘people,' on the other hand, now demand power, and they have the ‘acute editing abilities' to listen to whatever messages they want to hear. With consumers' ability to block media messages from being displayed to them, marketers must find a means to contact their customers without them realizing it is a kind of advertising. Curran, O'Hara, and O'Brien (2011) define media buying as "the practice of contacting the owner of a website and acquiring advertising space, typically in the form of a banner placement, on their website." Media purchasing placements are available on popular websites like YouTube and Facebook. Businesses depend on the data given by these websites to predict the percentage of their target audience that they will reach. When a company buys a spot on a high-traffic website, they may reach the bulk of their target market, but they will also be spending a lot of money on people that have little interest in what the company has to offer. One out of every five advertisements individuals see online today comes from social networking sites like Facebook (Curran, O'Hara, & O'Brien, 2011).
Each Social Networking website has a variety of features that may be utilized to advertise a company. On certain social networking sites, users may publish links, videos, photos, fan pages, groups, and even advertisements. Businesses may build generic pages in the same way that users can. Once the page is up and running, ‘friends' may be added in the hopes of gaining additional followers via ‘word of mouth' marketing. Once the original group of friends has been exhausted, events may be planned and more friends invited. However, unlike YouTube and Facebook, Twitter has tremendous potential to foster a vibrant and inventive ecosystem of users, businesses, and media sources, allowing people to participate in conversation on subjects that are relevant and important to them. In its early days, Twitter used the slogan "What are you doing?" which fit their model (Curran, O'Hara, & O'Brien, 2011).
They wanted people to talk about what was going on in their lives in real time. As the program increased in popularity, it started to develop naturally. Users started to exchange information in real time on a worldwide scale, companies were engaged and promoted brand conversation, and news started to break through the platform faster and more effectively than conventional mainstream media services. As a result, Twitter's slogan has been changed to "The greatest way to discover what's new in your world," which is more appropriate and relevant to the service it provides. However, the issue of how this potential may be fulfilled and put into practice remains. Many people are concerned about Twitter's lack of a viable business model, which may have been a factor in some companies' decision to spend time and money in the site. Because of the absence of a viable business model, there was no clearly defined strategic path for businesses to take, creating doubts about Twitter's relevance and value to them (Stutzbach et al., 2006).
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
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